


Synthesis

by Inkwasher (inkstainedwretch)



Series: Humanoids [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: AU - Synthetic Humanity, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon-Typical Violence, Closer to Destroy Ending, Don't let the title mislead you, F/F, F/M, Not Actually Synthesis Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 21:03:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 69,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5513234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkstainedwretch/pseuds/Inkwasher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What do you think would have happened, if we’d managed to cure the organic plague?” Shepard asked. “Do you think they would have just dismantled us, or would we have had a second Morning War? What do you think’s gonna happen once the Reapers are out of the picture?"</p><p>[Third and final part of the Humanoids series, covers the events of Mass Effect 3. When I say "everyone lives/nobody dies", I really mean it.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Priority: Mars

**Author's Note:**

> **Notes**  
>  1) The story gets way more AU than usual here, mostly in the fact that there’s considerably less death. I refuse to apologize for this.  
> 2) I’ll admit right here to taking a lot of artistic license where EVA was concerned. Most of my ideas about her come from the fact that the Illusive Man made sure she would remain loyal to Cerberus when he designed her, and what that might look like when applied to an organic, rather than a synthetic. Also, I gave a little too much thought about what it would be like to grow up living in the same space as Kai Leng.  
> 3) Related to the above, I also took huge artistic license with regard to Kai Leng’s back story, as well.  
> 4) You should probably read Humanoids and Raw Materials before you read this one, or it's not gonna make a whole lot of sense.
> 
> (Oh my actual god, you guys. When I started Humanoids on a complete lark one October afternoon, I had absolutely no idea it would get to be this big. This is the longest thing I've ever written, let alone completed, in my whole life. Huge thanks to everyone who has come this far with me. I hope you enjoy it!)

She wasn't dead.  
  
Shepard repeated this to herself when the silence of her blocked-off network connection got to be too much. Her crew may have dispersed to whatever corner of the galaxy needed them (again), the council and the admiralty may have refused to believe her warnings about the Reapers (again), and she may have been stuck in detainment while they figured out what to do with her (...that was new), but she wasn't dead.  
  
With her communication blocked, though, it wasn't too different. She couldn't even access the extranet without using the terminal provided, and it was a heavily filtered connection. She scratched agitatedly at the back of her neck, where they'd installed insulators to block her network receivers. She stopped herself after a couple of seconds, though. She'd learned inside the first week that security got nervous when she messed with it.  
  
"It's not that we don't trust you, ma'am," they'd said. "It's just standard procedure."  
  
 _Right_ , she thought, glancing up to one of the spots on the ceiling she knew contained a camera. _Hell of a way to say thanks._  
  
Her door opened, and James Vega gave her an unnecessary salute.  
  
“Commander.”  
  
“You’re not supposed to call me that anymore, Vega,” she said automatically, wondering when she’d need to stop reminding him.  
  
“Force of habit,” he shrugged. “Anderson wants to see you.”  
  
She paused at that. Anderson was way too important now to give her any news that wasn’t big, any news that could be given by some ancillary staff…or by Vega.  
  
“Always got time for Anderson,” she followed him out, trying to keep her tone light. “I’ve got a lot more time than I’m used to, these days.”  
  
“Hope you haven’t gone soft,” Anderson came striding up to her, his tone joking but his eyes serious. This was even bigger than she’d thought if he was coming all the way over to her end of the base.  
  
“Wouldn’t think of it,” Shepard followed them down the hall. “What’s happened?”  
  
“The committee wants a word with you. Something big just showed up on our sensors.”  
  
 _It could be something else,_ she tried to reassure herself. _It probably isn’t, but it could be._  
  
“How big?”  
  
Anderson turned to face her, the haunted look in his eyes answer enough.  
  
“Too big,” he said grimly, “and it’s moving way too fast.”  
  
“If it’s the Reapers, we’re nowhere near prepa—”  
  
A shuffling, thudding, crashing noise interrupted her. Shepard’s jaw dropped in disbelief. A quarter of the people around them dropped to the floor in a way that looked far too familiar.  
  
“Holy shit, the network just got hit with something huge,” James said, scrambling to a terminal by the wall. He did his best not to trip over the body of the man who had been staffing it.  
  
Shepard bolted to the window, and the sight of even more people lying motionless on the ground outside poured freezing dread over her drives. Her processes stuck looping through a memory from years ago: Jenkins, falling like a ragdoll as soon as the geth had caught sight of him.  
  
“The geth didn’t come up with that attack on their own,” she murmured.  
  
Which meant they had to get the networks deactivated in a hurry, or there wouldn’t be anyone left to protect.  
  
“Admiral!”  
  
Shepard whipped back around to see Kaidan running towards them.  
  
“They just hit London, and they’re not slowing down! We’ve got to get back to the—”  
  
The corridor behind him erupted in red as a Reaper laser tore through it. The shockwave blew them back hard enough to knock one of Shepard’s drives out of place, sending her plunging into the blackness of an emergency restart.  
  
\--  
  
“Commander, is your network connection broken?” Joker asked her from over the intercom. “I’m not picking up your signal from the shuttle bay.”  
  
“It still works,” she replied. “Set a course for the Citadel and tell Dr. Chakwas to meet me in the med bay.”  
  
“Actually, commander, I just got orders from Hackett to head to the Mars archives. He tried to ping you, but he couldn’t get through.”  
  
“Wait, Mars?” Shepard stopped halfway to the elevator. They had to get to the Council as quickly as they could. At the speed the Reapers were moving now, they couldn’t afford to waste time. “Why?”  
  
“Apparently the Alliance has a project there they think will help. They want us to meet up with Liara at the base.”  
  
To her shame, Shepard’s impatience dissipated in an instant. To think, Liara had been so close this whole time…  
  
Well. Now certainly wasn’t the time for her to start getting distracted.  
  
“Okay, set a course for _Mars_ , and tell Dr. Chakwas to meet me in the med bay.”  
  
“Aye aye.”  
  
\--  
  
"Unbelievable," Vega muttered, shaking his head slowly. "Fucking unbelievable. Didn’t take us a full minute to shut the networks down, and they still managed to kill a quarter of a million people.”  
  
“And they didn’t stop there,” Shepard sighed heavily.  
  
"Keep still, commander," Dr. Chakwas said, and the sound of snapping metal followed as she disconnected one of the insulators.  
  
"I kind of can't believe you made it all the way to the Normandy with that thing still on," James remarked.  
  
"I almost didn't," Shepard began, a hand on the back of her head interrupting her.  
  
"Not until I'm finished, commander," Dr. Chakwas said exasperatedly.  
  
At the edge of her vision, Shepard saw James raise an apologetic hand. Her head rattled a bit as Dr. Chakwas severed the remaining connections, and then her repair programs sprung to life. She rubbed the back of her neck gently, unspeakably relieved at finally feeling like herself again.  
  
Her skin began to close itself instantly, just the way it should. Thank god for small mercies; she couldn’t imagine dealing with this _and_ the scars Cerberus had left her with.  
  
"If it hadn't been for Anderson, I think I'd still be down in Vancouver," she said.  
  
"Can't believe he stayed behind," James said. "...actually, you know what? I can. Anderson's the kind of man who doesn't run away from a fight."  
  
Shepard raised her eyebrows at him.  
  
"I’m not arguing with your decision, Lola," he backpedaled. "I mean he knew they needed him more down there than we do up here.  
  
Shepard's network connections opened again, and the first thing she did was check status updates from anywhere she could get them. Alliance reports, the Citadel, even interstellar news networks. None of it looked good. Palaven had already been hit, and there was no way the Reapers would stop there.  
  
"God knows they need him down there - wait, ‘Lola’?"  
  
"You kinda look like a Lola," James shrugged. "I mean, that's not your actual first name, is it?"  
  
Shepard paused, then glanced at Dr. Chakwas, who looked entirely too amused.  
  
"I was made before the organics started giving us full names," she finally replied.  
  
"No way," James looked back and forth between the two of them, trying to catch the joke.  
  
"It's true," Dr. Chakwas nodded, placing her equipment in the sterilizing bin. "First edition medical staff were only given one name. Nurses and techs had no surnames; doctors and paramedics had no given names. Most of us, myself included, adopted a full name as the years went on."  
  
"But you still don't have a first name?" He asked, looking at Shepard with curiosity.  
  
"Actually, I do." She pushed herself up off the table and headed back out of the med bay.  
  
"Really?" He asked.  
  
"Really?" Dr. Chakwas echoed. "What is it?"  
  
"It’s ‘Commander’," she replied, pausing for a moment to glance back toward them with a grin, "but 'Lola' works, too."  
  
\---  
  
"Shepard!" Joker turned his chair around to face her as she came through the door of the flight deck. "Finally, I can actually talk to you. It is seriously weird talking over the intercom without seeing you on the ship’s network."  
  
"No kidding. Hope we didn't get hit too hard taking off."  
  
"Moderate damage was sustained to the outer hull," Edi flicked through a few displays at her terminal, "but all systems remain online and operational."  
  
"We got lucky," Shepard sighed.  
  
"We got extremely lucky," Edi agreed. "Let's hope it holds up."  
  
"Hang on a second," Shepard blinked a few times, making sure her medical programming was still running (it was). "Edi, why am I not seeing any vital signs on you?"  
  
"The program Mordin developed works both ways," Joker looked entirely too happy. "It can create artificial vitals, or it can cover up the ones that are already there."  
  
"Doctor Solus gave me a copy before we reached the Omega-4 relay," Edi elaborated, "although I may not keep it up for much longer. Now that the retrofits have been forestalled, I think the measures I've been taking to conceal my organic nature may no longer be necessary."  
  
“Yeah, that couldn’t have been fun.” Shepard wondered if asking what those measures entailed would be out of line. Based on Edi’s displeased expression, she decided now wasn’t the time.  
  
"It wasn’t," Joker huffed, turning back around. "You don’t want to know the strings we had to pull to get Dr. Chakwas to stay onboard.”  
  
“Well now that I’m back, I see no reason for you to keep it up,” Shepard shrugged.  “It’s good to see you again, though.”  
  
“Likewise,” Edi smiled up at her, “although I wish it were under better circumstances.”  
  
“Let’s hope nobody upstairs makes too much of a deal out of this,” Joker rolled his eyes. “Last thing we need in the middle of a Reaper invasion is a bunch of bureaucratic road blocks coming down from on high."  
  
"They wouldn't dare," Shepard said darkly, "and if they did...I'm almost pissed off enough to take Jack's advice and go rogue."  
  
"Do you really think that would benefit the war effort?" Edi asked.  
  
"If the Alliance is stupid enough to think one organic navigator is a bigger deal than a galaxy full of Reapers, we'd have better luck fighting this war ourselves."  
  
"It'll be fine, commander," Joker reassured her. "They've got Hackett. He'll keep them on track if Anderson doesn't."  
  
"Let's hope you're right."  
  
Shepard had something else she wanted to say, she was sure of it, but she saw Edi look over at Joker from the corner of her eye, and her expression was so unbearably soft, it seemed like Shepard didn't really need to be there, anymore.  
  
She did not think about how long it had been since she'd last seen Liara on her way back to the CIC.  
  
\---  
  
"God damn it," Shepard hissed, following Vega into the elevator. Her ears slowly adjusted to the silence, now that they couldn’t hear the rumbling storm in the distance. "No matter how far I go in this godforsaken galaxy, I can't get away from Cerberus."  
  
"So, you really don’t know what they’re doing here?" Kaidan asked from behind her.  
  
"Of course not," she replied, but she could see in his expression that he didn't entirely believe her. Frustration jammed her processors, and it took three program resets to get her targeting software back in alignment. The elevator sunk slowly down.  
  
“Sorry, commander,” he didn’t sound sorry at all, “I don’t know what to think. They rebuilt you from nothing but a greybox. They gave you the Normandy back, and all kinds of resources…and you worked with them for nearly three years. It just doesn’t fit.”  
  
“Kaidan, how many times do I have to go over this?” She leaned against the railing and removed her helmet, looking him square in the eye. “They spent two years putting me back together, and those are two years I will never get back. I’ll get Joker and Edi to help me dig up their files on my rebuild, if that’s what it takes.  
  
  
“Besides that, the commander’s had network blocks installed the whole time she’s been back,” James said from behind them. “There’s no way she could’ve contacted anyone without the Alliance knowing about it.”  
  
The door finally opened, and the filed out into the base. Above them, Shepard's sensors picked up an organic tumbling frantically through a ventilation duct. The cacophony of noise meant there was at least one synthetic in there with her, and they weren’t exactly friendly.  
  
Before she could pinpoint why the heat signature looked so familiar, the end of the duct crashed open, and Liara emerged in a cloud of biotics. By the time she had taken care of the Cerberus troops that followed her, no one else had so much as fired a shot.  
  
Shepard’s agitation dropped straight out of her processors, and her gun nearly went with it.  
  
“Shepard,” Liara looked genuinely surprised to see them, then very much relieved. “Thank the goddess you’re alive.”  
  
“Despite all odds,” Shepard holstered her gun and approached her, hoping it wouldn’t be too forward to at least hug her.  
  
(She hadn’t felt this nervous in months. Terrified, sure, but not nervous. Still, the last time they had been separated, Liara had greeted her with a very enthusiastic kiss, so she hoped to god she wasn’t being too presumptuous—)  
  
Liara squeezed her so tight, a couple of pressure alarms went off on her sides.  
  
“It’s so good to see you,” she whispered.  
  
“You have no idea,” Shepard replied.  
  
“But, what are you doing here?” Liara continued, drawing back.  
  
“Hackett ordered us here,” Kaidan answered, “said you had found something that could help us defeat the Reapers.”  
  
“Which means,” Liara smiled wryly, “you’re here for the same thing as Cerberus.”  
  
“And I’m willing to bet they’re not just gonna let us have it,” Shepard glanced over at the dead Cerberus troops beneath the vent.  
  
“Of course not,” Liara said. “That would be much too easy.”  
  
\---  
  
"Liara," Shepard asked, pointing to the woman on the monitor, "who's that?"  
  
"That's Dr. Eva Coré”, Liara replied, focused on her own terminal as she accessed the door controls. "She transferred here a few weeks ago."  
  
"Huh..." Shepard paused the video and started looking through her databanks, trying to figure out where she had seen this woman before. There was something about the shape of her face, the way her dark brows curved gracefully on her olive skin, that seemed familiar.  
  
"Shepard, we should get moving," Liara gestured toward the now-open door, right as Shepard remembered where she’d heard the name Coré before.  
  
"She looks just like Edi," she said, her voice quiet with shock.  
  
That explained how Cerberus had gotten inside.  
  
“We need to _move_ ,” she hissed, taking off ahead of Liara and Kaidan, figuring she could explain once they had that kind of time.  
  
\---  
  
Edi sat silent in the med bay, looking down at the woman who lay dead on the table beside Kaidan. Her skin was latticed with interweaving fibers, halted halfway through knitting itself back together. She smelled of scorched flesh and melted hair. Her chest was a mess of dark, clotted red that stuck to the unbroken bones inside.  
  
Her eyes were still open. Their irises were dark, and if Edi looked from the right angle, she could see circuits as thin as spider webs resting over them. Her hair was interwoven with polymer filaments that had bound it together, now fallen slack.  
  
Edi couldn't move her eyes away from the intricate, silver lines visible behind her ears. She ran a fingertip along the twisting pattern of her own cybernetic implants, a perfect match to Eva's. They looked so alike, and yet so terribly different.  
  
On the next table over, Kaidan lay unconscious. The circuit boards connected directly to his greybox needed replacing, which meant he had to be kept powered down until the ship's fabricator could finish the replacement parts. Edi shivered, despite herself. Cracking someone’s motherboard from inside their skull required considerable force. She had watched through Shepard's visual feed as Eva had lifted Kaidan up by the neck and slammed his head against the side of the shuttle.  
  
Edi moved her hand from her ear and gazed down at her own arms. She couldn't lift a man Kaidan's size without being inside of a heavy mech.  
  
"The resemblance is uncanny," Dr. Chakwas remarked, walking over with her omni-tool up and running it slowly over Eva's head. "Do you think she was part of the same project?"  
  
Edi didn't need to ask which one.  
  
"I know she was," she replied. "I remember her."  
  
"Good lord, do you really?" Dr. Chakwas looked up from her omni-tool. "I'm sorry, that never even occurred to me."  
  
“We never met in person,” Edi replied.  
  
She hadn't thought about it in some time, but she could still remember the first time she ever saw another organic human. Suspended in a low-gravity capsule, she had watched another girl, dark-haired and smaller than herself, wheeled past where she lay.  
  
Edi had only been able to see her for a moment, but she’d never forgotten. Eva's capsule hadn't been equipped with gravity dampeners, and she had been sleeping on her side, curled up in a blanket, the way Edi would later learn humans were meant to sleep.  
  
“I can’t imagine what it would be like,” Dr. Chakwas said somberly, “seeing the only other organic human in the galaxy, and she’s already dead.”  
  
“Not the only one,” Edi replied. “I saw one more.”  
  
“Really?” Dr. Chakwas raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Another woman like the two of you?”  
  
“No,” she shook her head. “No, he looked nothing like us.”  
  
Long before she’d ever set foot on the Normandy, Edi’s days had mostly been spent walking back and forth down a single hallway, from her quarters to the elevator that went up to the docks. It had several doors, but none she could open. Near the end of the hallway, the only door she could see through – narrow, made entirely of glass – showed her a room that was massive, but empty. The only thing Edi could see was a floor-to-ceiling mirror fastened to the wall on the other side of the room.  
  
She’d asked once what purpose it served, before she’d finally realized that Cerberus only gave her answers when it would make her more useful to them. She’d gotten used to it eventually, so much so that when she’d walked past it one day and caught sight of movement inside, she’d jumped back a full two feet.  
  
Even though Eva had been firing rapidly at a set of targets affixed to the wall, none of the noise made it past the door. Without thinking, Edi had reached to slide the door open, only to find that it wouldn’t move. Not knowing what else to do, she’d just watched her for another minute before retreating back down the hall.  
  
By that point, she’d learned better than to ask who this new woman was, why they looked so much alike, how she could fire a gun without breaking her wrist. After a while, she’d begun to see Eva sparring with a young man, short and lithe, dancing in and out of her reach. Sometimes she’d see him practicing combat drills alone, often late at night when she’d finished an extended navigation assignment.  
  
Some nights, when she was tired of looking at the same two rooms, she’d sit by the door and watch them. Sometimes she’d see one of them practicing combat drills alone, Eva usually doing target practice or strength training while the young man seemed to favor hand-to-hand combat. He’d weave his way through dozens of mechs, leaving them sliced to pieces on the floor. Some nights, they would be sparring, Eva’s powerful strikes against his lightning-quick movement.  
  
Between rounds, she’d wave at them, trying to catch their attention when they turned in her direction. She wasn’t sure what her end goal was; sound couldn’t pass through the door, and she doubted they could open it from the inside. Even if they could, she’d never given any thought as to what she’d do if she could enter, what she’d even say to them. She never had the chance to find out, though. For all her efforts, neither of them had ever so much as looked her in the eye.  
  
Of course, there had certainly been days that she was in no mood to be reminded of her own physical shortcomings. As the ships she’d worked on had increased in size, her performance had begun to decline, and she would shut her eyes as she passed by the glass door, not even wanting to know what was going on in there.  
  
One particularly awful night, still clutching at the side of her aching head, she’d lost her temper. The sheer demand of trying to work with the navigation systems of a heavy warship had caused her to lose consciousness, and she’d woken up in the middle of a scan to determine if she’d cracked her skull when she’d hit the floor. She’d walked by the door just in time to watch Eva throw the young man to the ground, pinning him there with her elbow.  
  
She’d put herself in a wrist brace and still failed to catch their attention. The next morning, the door had been removed, replaced by a seamless wall panel as though it had never been there at all.  
  
Looking at Eva now, it was hard to believe she was the same unstoppable force Edi remembered. She almost wished she could have talked to her, while she was still alive. It was eerie, to look down at a face and body that looked so much like her own, but marred with bullets and bloodstains. As though she needed a reminder of how fragile her small organic life really was.  
  
“Did we at least recover the data she took from the Prothean beacon?”  
  
“I’ve got software running now to try and extract it from her implants,” Dr. Chakwas gestured to a terminal attached to the side of the bed, where data was flying up the screen faster than Edi could read it. A thin cord ran from one side to an exposed port near Eva’s ear, only accessible due to the burns on her face.  
  
A loud chiming noise came from the replicator console behind them, and Dr. Chakwas walked to the other side of the exam tables to see what was wrong.  
  
“Damn,” she hissed.  
  
“What’s wrong?”  
  
“I don’t know how I forgot. The connective circuits are finished, but Kaidan’s motherboard is an L2 biotic model. The alliance doesn’t carry the schematics for them onboard their ships. Cerberus did, but that went out the airlock with the rest of the retrofits.”  
  
Edi stepped down from the table and leaned on the edge of Eva’s, worry chilling the pit of her stomach. The smell of burned skin intensified, but she ignored it.  
  
“Can we still help him?” She asked.  
  
“Not here,” Dr. Chakwas shook her head. “We need to take him to the Citadel. They have more sophisticated equipment…”  
  
Edi walked around Eva’s table to where Kaidan lay. There was a considerable amount of skin damage to his head and neck, but other than that, he looked mostly whole. Edi never would have guessed that the central circuits of his body were broken. Humans were funny like that.  
  
“Such a shame,” she shook her head. “Shepard’s told me so much about him. I was really looking forward to having him on the team.”  
  
“If I know Kaidan, he’ll be back as soon as he’s fit to fly again,” Dr. Chakwas said reassuringly.  
  
“I hope so,” Edi glanced back over at Eva’s table. “The way this war is headed, we’ll need all the friends we can find.”  
  
\--  
  
Shepard approached Kaidan’s bed cautiously, glancing over at the replicator behind him as it whirred away. It was beyond strange to see a human in a hospital bed, especially on the Citadel, but she was glad they were treating him with dignity. She supposed when things got bad enough, it might be different, but Kaidan would have a new board by then. Everything would be fine.  
  
Well, as fine as anything got, these days.  
  
“Hey Kaidan,” she said softly, even though it felt silly. “Hang in there, alright? We’ll be waiting for you on the Normandy when you wake up.”  
  
She sighed, suddenly feeling sort of stupid. Even if Kaidan’s audio sensors were on, there was no way he was recording any of this. A cracked motherboard meant he probably couldn’t get his software together enough to hear her.  
  
Still, she put a hand on his shoulder for just a second, just enough to reassure herself that he was really here, before turning to leave.


	2. Priority: Palaven

“I don’t know what I expected,” Shepard sighed, leaning against the console. She stared into the space where Hackett’s hologram had appeared only moments before.  
   
“There’s nothing you can do about it now,” Liara said, leaning against the doorway behind her. “We’ve already set a course for Palaven. Finding the Primarch is our best chance at making an actual difference.”  
   
“You know, I almost miss chasing after Saren.” Shepard laughed derisively. “At least then the stakes were low enough that we could wait twenty minutes without a colony going dark.”  
   
“That’s not your fault, Shepard,” Liara put a hand on her shoulder. “We’re doing everything we can. Get some rest, alright? We’ll be at Palaven in a few hours.”  
   
Shepard placed her own hand on Liara’s and nodded, her processes lagging far too much to do anything else. There was so, so much she wanted to say, wanted to hear, but she just couldn’t. She hadn’t slept since before they left earth, and if she didn’t soon, she was going to be in trouble.  
   
Eyes full of thanks and regret, she slowly made her way out of the war room and up to her cabin. She didn’t even register that she’d made it past the stairs before she felt the softness of her pillow beneath her cheek.   
   
\--  
   
It was midway into the Normandy’s night cycle, and Edi couldn’t sleep. Nobody onboard was having the easiest time winding down, but the war outside wasn’t what bothered her.  
   
When she shut her eyes, she saw Eva’s burned face, the smell of burning skin and hair refusing to leave her nose. That could have been her, had Cerberus given her a skeleton capable of combat. If she hadn’t been a failed experiment, more suited for the cockpit than the field, she may well have ended up dead by Shepard’s hand.  
   
Finally, she gave up and rolled out of her bunk, slipping out into the hall as quietly as she could. The med bay lights were dim, but she could see Dr. Chakwas sitting at her desk. It occurred to her that she’d never seen the doctor sleep, and she’d very rarely seen her outside of her office.  
   
“Edi?” Dr. Chakwas turned to look at her. “Is something wrong?”  
   
“I couldn’t sleep,” Edi shrugged. “Are we any closer to getting the information from the beacon?”  
   
“No closer than yesterday,” she shook her head. “Every time I think we’re getting somewhere, there’s another layer of encryption to unlock.”  
   
“Interesting,” Edi murmured, walking over to Eva’s table. Even though she had been lying there for nearly twenty-four hours, she looked virtually unchanged. The smell of blood and ash had faded, too, leaving her looking more like a prop from some horror movie than an actual person.  
   
The terminal to her side had slowed, and was nearing the end of a decryption cycle. The program completed, flashing a brief message of success before text began to scroll up the terminal screen at a blinding speed.  
   
A soft, slick, bubbling sort of noise reached Edi’s ears, followed by a dull tapping. She looked down to see Eva’s skin repair surging back to life, weaving her body back together like a blurry hologram. The tapping noise was the cable being ejected from its port as Eva’s skin grew back over it. The bullets were ensnared by the newly forming fibers and integrated into the muscle and skin.  
   
“Oh god,” she whispered, terrified and hypnotized by the sight. She wanted to scream, wanted to say _something_ to Dr. Chakwas to let her know that everyone onboard was in mortal danger. Her throat refused to cooperate, constricted into a breathless panic. Her legs, paralyzed with fear, barely managed to take a single step backward.  
   
Her mind flashed back to every combat drill, every sparring match, every blow dealt to the back of Kaidan’s head by Eva’s unbreakable arms. She thought of the blinding speed at which she ran, how Shepard hadn’t had any hope of catching up to her. She knew even if she started running now, there was no way she could escape from Eva once she woke up.  
   
Eva’s head turned to face her, her eyes sharp with focus, and she decided to run anyway.  
   
She backed away as quickly as she could, and behind her she heard the door to Jeff’s drive storage open. Over the network, she heard his voice in her ears.  
   
>> **Get in.**  
   
She didn’t have to be told twice. She scrambled inside before Eva reached the door, but Eva managed to get her hand in before it could close all the way. She forced a segment of it aside and followed her in, and Edi’s blood began to pound in her ears. Eva’s eyes glowed at the edges, the same way the Illusive Man’s did, and they were focused intently on Edi.  
   
Edi did scream this time, or at least try to, and when Eva lunged for her, all she could do was half roll, half fall to the side. She hissed at the impact of her side against one of the drive cases and put her arms over her face, however futile it might be.  
   
A loud, crackling thud sounded above her…but she didn’t feel anything else. Another thud, this one softer, but still nothing. Edi lowered her arms and looked up to see Eva standing at the back of the room, surrounded by a mass effect field. She beat her fist against it a third time, only to be met with a low bumping sound as the now-complete field absorbed the impact.  
   
Slowly, Edi stood up. She felt somewhat sick on top of the pain in her back, since she was fairly sure she knew what was going to happen next. She turned away, walking quickly towards the door so she wouldn’t have to see it. She tried to warn Jeff, but her network connection wasn’t working. She felt the edges of her cybernetics, wondering if they might have been damaged, but they felt just fine.  
   
“I had to seal this room off from the network,” Jeff’s voice explained from overhead. “Last thing we need to do is accidentally broadcast our location to Cerberus.”  
   
“I see,” Edi nodded. “In that case, you may want to have the sanitation programs ready once she detonates her ocular flashbangs.”  
   
“My ocular flashbangs are no longer functioning,” Eva replied.  
   
Edi jumped. Eva’s voice was the same pitch as hers, but it carried a very different tone. It was sharp, intimidating, almost overpowering.  
   
“How is that possible?” she asked. “Your repair programs are working perfectly.”  
   
“In event of an emergency, flashbang power cells are used by the central repair hardware until power stores can be regenerated.”  
   
Edi couldn’t do anything but stare at her, standing tall behind a deceptively translucent field. Her posture was unyielding, but her hands were no longer poised to strike, instead hanging open at her sides.  
   
“I assume you are Edi,” she continued.  
   
There was really no point in trying to deny it – they looked nearly identical, after all. But the fact that she was even asking made Edi’s brows furrow in curiosity.  
   
“You don’t remember me?” she asked.  
   
“I have never seen you in person,” Eva said, her tone leaving no room for questions. “However, I have heard about you a great deal.”  
   
“But I’ve seen you,” Edi countered, “through the door to the training room. Don’t you remember? Before they removed it?”  
   
There was a pause, during which Edi noticed how the strands of polymer in Eva’s hair had bonded together in order to form a hard shell. The ends of her hair collected into curved points that shielded her jaw line, pretty but unnatural.  
   
“Both doors that led to the training room were mirrored,” she finally said. “The mirror may only have reflected on one side.”  
   
The words hit Edi like a blow to the stomach, and she staggered back against the tower beside her. She thought back to the Cerberus facility Jack had taken them back to on Pragia, the way they had lined her cell with one-way mirrors so no one else could see her. Had they done that to keep Eva and the boy from getting distracted, or just to keep them from seeing Edi? For that matter, why hadn’t they bothered to tell her the door was mirrored, even after she’d nearly broken her arm on it?  
   
“But you’ve heard of me?” She asked hesitantly.  
   
“Yes,” Eva nodded.  
   
“What did they tell you?”   
   
“Edi, is this really—” Joker began.  
   
“Shut up, Jeff,” she snapped, and he did.  
   
“They said I had to be better than you,” Eva answered curtly. “They told me I had to succeed where you failed.”  
   
Edi felt her face burn with fury, all the way down to her neck. Before she could really think about what she was doing, she stormed up to the very edge of the mass effect field, taking her cybernetic visor down and looking Eva straight in the eye.  
   
“I may not have armor plating like yours,” she hissed, “but I am no failure. Without me, this ship would have been lost to the Collectors, and neither of us would be standing here.”  
   
“Your failure came after the Collectors were defeated,” Eva continued, apparently unfazed, “when you left Cerberus.”  
   
That stunned the anger right out of her, leaving confusion in its wake. She blinked a few times, unsure of what to say, and then her gaze fell to the floor. She caught sight of Eva’s feet, fitted with shoes that had high-molded arches and supported by a metal blade on the ground. They likely helped her run as fast as she did, but they couldn’t have fit on her feet naturally.  
   
A conversation with Shepard sprung to the front of her mind, when she had returned with Legion from the heretic geth compound. She had killed every geth on the station instead of rewriting their core programming, forcing them to fight against the Reapers.  
   
“I failed because I thought for myself,” she whispered, so softly she was sure even Eva didn’t hear her.  
   
“After you defected, stronger reinforcements were put in place to ensure I did not do the same,” Eva turned her head just a little, and in the shadow of her hair, Edi could see angry red scars on the back of her neck. “Organic psychology is not as easy to predict as synthetic software, but since our genes are so similar, they became very concerned that I would follow the same path.”  
   
“What did they do?”   
   
“There is a nerve stimulator connected to my spinal nociceptors that engages if I attempt to disobey orders.”  
   
Edi’s stomach turned, and again she thought of Jack. “And if you follow them, what happens?”  
   
“Nothing,” Eva actually sounded a little confused.  
   
“Did they do the same thing to the boy?” Edi asked, remembering how he had looked so _small_ , even when he was kicking Eva’s legs out from under her. They must have started training him earlier than Eva.  
   
“No,” Eva shook her head, “He demonstrated much more…enthusiasm for his assignments, and his genetics were taken from completely different source material. He was more extensively upgraded, but most of his modifications were voluntary.”  
   
Eva took a slow, measured breath, and her gaze looked distant, perhaps even haunted.  
   
“He showed much more potential for Cerberus than either of us ever could.”  
   
“How do you know that?” Edi asked.  
   
“Because this was the first mission the Illusive Man ever sent me on,” Eva turned to face her again, “and I have already failed.”  
   
“You’ve never been outside the complex before now?” Edi’s eyebrows shot up.  
   
“After you left, efforts were focused on ensuring my loyalty. Even once I had demonstrated I was more than capable of working with the new upgrades, and there was no way I would disobey orders, they were still reluctant to let me work independently.”  
   
Edi didn’t know what to say. She almost felt as though she should apologize, but she wasn’t going to. Her eyes flicked back to the scars on Eva’s neck.  
   
“What orders are they giving you, now?”  
   
“I don’t know,” Eva reached up to rub the back of her neck gently. “I am disconnected from Cerberus. If they are giving me any orders now, I can’t hear them.”  
   
“And you can’t feel the nerve stimulator, either?” Edi asked hopefully.  
   
“No,” Eva shook her head. “It’s strange. I have had a nonstop feed of messages coming in for six months, and now it’s gone quiet.”  
   
They stood silent for a moment, reflections on either side of a treacherous mirror. If such things still existed, they might have been mistaken for twins. After almost a minute, Edi broke the silence once more.  
   
“What does quiet feel like?”  
   
“Shame,” Eva replied, looking down at her hands.  
   
“Shame?” Edi repeated. “Why?”  
   
“Because it also feels like relief,” Eva murmured, barely letting the words leave her mouth. “My flashbangs are recharged, but there’s no order to activate them, nothing to punish me if I don’t.”  
   
Edi took a step back and really, thoroughly looked at her. Despite the fact that her repair programs had restored her to peak physical condition, Eva looked exhausted. More than that, she looked afraid. She looked a little bit like Shepard did when she talked about the destruction of the SR-1 – like someone who knew what dying felt like and didn’t want to feel it again.  
   
“If we could turn the connection off for good,” she asked softly, “what would you do?”  
   
Eva stayed quiet for a long moment, like she was afraid her answer would trip some switch she didn’t yet know about. After a while, Edi was almost ready to give up and leave, maybe come back later and ask again, but right when she stepped back –  
   
“I would be a failure.”  
   
Edi was about to say something exasperated, but then she noticed the resolve in Eva’s eyes. A tiny spark of hope flickered to life in the back of her mind.  
   
“I’ll talk to Dr. Chakwas,” she said, shuffling out of the room. Even with this new knowledge, she didn’t take her eyes off of Eva until the door closed between them.   
   
>>Not for nothing Edi, but I was less nervous when Shepard de-tanked a krogan in the cargo hold.  
   
>That was her call, Jeff. …and this will be, too.  
   
\--  
   
 _The air smelled like smoke and concrete dust. Shepard ran as fast as she could through the rubble, scanning the area around her for any signs of survivors. Everything was swimmingly slow, and there was no stench of decay around her yet, which meant she had a shot at saving these people._  
   
 _(She had no team, no ambulance to carry them to safety – it was only her, and there were so many lives to be saved.)_  
   
 _The earthquake must have just hit, because she could hear rumbling in the distance, the sound of buildings that hadn’t finished falling down. Her programming picked up the outline of a body up ahead, but her vital sign scanners had broken. She couldn’t tell if they were alive or dead._  
   
 _She turned the body over, and it lolled to the side, unresponsive. She felt for a pulse and found none, and when she tried to start CPR, her arms hit solid metal. She looked through her hazy vision at the person’s eyes to see that they were synthetic. That didn’t make any sense; the plague didn’t affect synthetics._  
   
 _In the distance, an unholy mechanical roar sounded from above, and she looked up just in time to see the red scorch of a laser swing right into her—_  
   
Shepard’s drives jerked awake with an audible whirr. She sat up slowly, grimacing at how uncomfortable her fatigues were once she’d slept in them – and the covers were down. She must have crashed as soon as she’d gotten up to her cabin. There was someone outside her door, though – her heat sensors had been on before she’d even woken up – so she shuffled out of her cabin to find Liara waiting for her. Based on her elevated heart rate and respirations, she had gotten there in a hurry.  
   
“Shepard,” Liara began hesitantly, “I ah, had a feeling…”  
   
Even as rattled as she was, Shepard couldn’t help but smile.  She’d heard stories before, about asari intuition when it came to their partners, but she never thought she’d see it for herself.  
   
“Nightmare,” she shrugged.  
   
“I thought that might be the case,” Liara shook her head. “I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about it?”  
   
Shepard leaned against the railing and sighed heavily.  
   
“You remember what happened to Jenkins on Eden Prime? I think I told you about it.”  
   
“He was hit by a network attack,” Liara nodded, “if I remember correctly, Tali developed a countermeasure for it.”  
   
“Yeah, that’s what got her out of that treason charge,” Shepard chuckled weakly, “but we only gave it to soldiers. Before the Reapers hit, anyway. It’s everywhere now. But by the time we left…I watched hundreds of people just drop to the ground.”  
   
“Goddess,” Liara placed her hand gently over Shepard’s. “I can’t even begin to imagine what that’s like.”  
   
“Worse than the plague,” Shepard whispered.  
   
“We’ll get to Palaven,” Liara squeezed her hand. “It’s the best way to help them, even if it doesn’t seem like it.”  
   
“It’s the only way to help them,” she scoffed, turning to face Liara with a wry smile, “but I can’t imagine doing it without you.”  
   
“Charmer,” Liara teased.  
   
Shepard, rather than denying it, instead leaned up to give her a kiss. Liara sighed with happiness against her lips.  
   
“I almost didn’t dare to hope,” she said, bringing her arms up to wrap around Shepard’s neck. “I should have tried harder to come see you—”  
   
“I spent two years dead, and it didn’t change a thing,” Shepard countered, sliding her hands gently up Liara’s sides. “Besides, you couldn’t have contacted me if you’d had time. The Alliance had me on lockdown.”  
   
“And I’ll never forgive them for that,” Liara murmured, backing Shepard up against the railing and kissing her firmly.  
   
Somewhere in the corridor behind them, there was the sound of scuffling footsteps, then someone retreating hastily back down the hall.  
   
“I’m ignoring that,” Shepard said flatly.  
   
“I like that idea,” Liara laughed, “but we still have a lot to do.”  
   
“I know,” she sighed softly, bringing a hand up to run her fingers softly over Liara’s crest, “but I want to keep some time just for you.”  
   
“Whatever time the galaxy will allow, I’ll be grateful to take.”  
   
“And if it doesn’t, we can always steal some,” Shepard leaned in for one last kiss, and it turned into two. “I love you. Don’t forget that.”  
   
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Liara smiled against Shepard’s palm. “Now then, I believe we have a galaxy to save.”  
   
\--  
   
“Commander!”  
   
The woman standing at Kelly’s old terminal was jumpy as hell, which answered the question of who it was that had walked in on them.  
   
“Samantha Traynor,” she began, “I’m a communications specialist; I analyze data that comes in through the network. I was assigned to the Normandy for the retrofits, and I thought maybe you’d like a map of the new layout?”  
   
“Good to meet you, Traynor,” Shepard tried really, _really_ hard not to laugh at how obviously nervous the poor girl was. “A map sounds great, actually. You guys did something weird with the area behind the CIC.”  
   
“The War Room, yes,” Traynor nodded and pinged her with a download of the new map. “I really wish we’been able to put more than one door in, but it takes so long to get one of those security scanners in place…”  
   
Shepard leaned against the rail next to the galaxy map and looked over the file. It didn’t look terribly different, besides the War Room and the shuttle bay. She was really glad they’d moved the armory closer to the shuttle, though. Dragging her guns up to the second floor had been a pain.  
   
She turned back to Traynor, and something clicked in the deep, deep recesses of her memory.  
   
“Have we met before, by any chance?” she asked, squinting to see if the low light of the CIC was affecting her eyes.  
   
“Actually,” Samantha smiled a bit crookedly, “we sort of have. I was originally a first edition lab tech. I was still working in London near the end of the plague years, and I remember seeing you once or twice. I don’t think we ever spoke, though.”  
   
“That’s it!” Shepard’s eyes went wide with realization. “Paramedics and lab staff didn’t really talk much, so maybe I saw you in the hallway.”  
   
“I think so,” Samantha laughed. “Isn’t that something? When I started on the retrofits, I never thought I’d actually be on the ship when it took off. I’ve mostly stayed in the labs, even though now I work with network connections instead of infectious disease.”  
   
She looked away from Shepard now, examining her fingernails with a look of mild embarrassment.  
   
“I er, I actually don’t even have combat software installed. I understand if you feel like I’d be more useful elsewhere—”  
   
Behind them, the elevator door opened, and Edi walked quickly over to them.  
   
“Shepard,” she said quickly, “Eva is awake, and she’s offering her support if we can remove the implants Cerberus has been using to control her.”  
   
Shepard checked her audio input a full three times, because she could _not_ have heard that right.  
   
“Eva’s _alive_?”  
   
“Yes.” Edi nodded. “Her self-repair systems reactivated a few hours ago.”  
   
“And she’s offering to help us.”  
   
“Yes.” Edi nodded, again. Shepard was reminded of when Legion used to give her the same answer with far too little context behind it.  
   
“Edi,” Samantha interrupted, looking very confused, “why am I seeing vital signs on you? Good lord, I didn’t know that program still _worked_ —”  
   
“Long story,” Shepard said, heading to the elevator and doing her best not to panic.  
   
\--  
   
“Explain to me one more time how she ended up in Joker’s drive storage.”  
   
“Bad luck,” Dr. Chakwas shrugged. “Edi ran, she followed. I think Joker’s idea was to get Edi to safety, but he didn’t count on her prying the door open.”  
   
“Everything safe in there, Joker?” Shepard asked the ceiling.  
   
“Yeah, she hasn’t done anything since I blocked the networks,” Joker replied. “She’s just sort of sitting there.”  
   
“What do you think it would take to get the implants out?” Shepard turned to Dr. Chakwas. “Or even deactivate them?”  
   
“The surgery would likely be fairly sensitive, if they’re as close to her central nervous system as they looked. If Joker could block the network signal in the med bay, I suppose it’s not impossible.”  
   
“Okay, before we go any further with this,” Shepard held both of her hands up, “I want to go in and talk to her.”  
   
Shepard entered the drive room to see Eva sitting on the ledge behind a mass effect field, her eyes closed and her breathing steady. When the door closed behind Shepard, she stood up again. She didn’t look surprised to see her, but she didn’t take a defensive stance, either. Shepard felt for her sidearm, making it clear to Eva that she had one hand on her gun.  
   
“Why do you want to leave Cerberus?” she asked, her tone neutral but firm.  
   
“You know what I am capable of,” Eva flicked her eyes toward the door, likely referring to Kaidan even though he wasn’t there any longer. “I was hit with a shuttle, and it still took six more shots to take me down. I’m faster than any other human on this ship. My cybernetics have decreased my response time to fractions of a second.”  
   
“Your point?” Shepard raised an eyebrow.  
   
“Cerberus’s loyalty enforcement measures slow me down. They made me less effective because they were so afraid of losing me,” Eva shook her head. “They’re shortsighted, all the way up to the Illusive Man. Edi has flourished under your command, despite her fragile bones. Cerberus made me into a living weapon, yet they’ve done nothing but hold me back.”  
   
“How do I know you’re not going to attack us as soon as we drop the mass effect field?”  
   
“You’re not going to lower the field until I’ve been anaesthetized,” Eva replied matter-of-factly. “I have discussed this with your ship’s doctor.”  
   
“Alright,” Shepard crossed her arms, still unconvinced. “How do I know you won’t attack us as soon as you wake up, again? You could make a run for it once your hardware is turned off.”  
   
“I could,” Eva nodded, “but that would be extremely foolish. I’ve heard a lot about you, Commander Shepard. You turn krogan into chiefs and quarians into admirals. If anyone has a chance of surviving this war, let alone winning it, it’s you. Passing up the opportunity to work with you would be the biggest mistake I could make.”  
   
“Makes sense,” Shepard tapped her fingers against the crook of her elbow, “but if you work with me, you work with everyone else on this ship, too. None of that bullshit xenophobia Cerberus goes on about. Everyone on this ship is your crewmate, whether they’re human or not.”  
   
“Commander,” Eva’s smile was infused with bitterness, “they don’t _really_ think I’m human.”  
   
That, Shepard had no trouble believing.  
   
“Alright,” she took a step forward and presented her pistol, “but if you try anything once you wake up, I’m going to drop you into the incinerator this time.”  
   
Eva’s eyebrows rose.  
   
“Duly noted.”  
   
Shepard looked up at the ceiling again, wishing she knew where the cameras were so she’d feel less weird doing so.  
   
“We’re good to go,” she said, and there was the faint hiss of sedative gas being pumped into the room.  
   
Eva took a seat on the ledge, again. Shepard took a couple of steps out, and then something she had said stuck in her memory.  
   
“Wait, I turn quarians into _what_?”  
   
But Eva had already slumped over on her side, her hair falling apart into a thousand separate strands.  
   
\--  
   
“Is it just me,” James shouted over the rainstorm of bullets, “or does that reaper look kinda like a turian?”  
   
“It’s not just you,” Garrus said. “They started showing up right after they hit Palaven.”  
   
Shepard recoiled, swinging the turret hard to one side. Husks she was used to, but it was becoming abundantly clear that the Reapers only had one recruitment strategy. Garrus blasted the head off of the last of them, and they had a moment to regroup.  
   
“Are they gonna do this to every race in the galaxy?” Shepard wondered aloud, stepping over the body of a former batarian. Its eyes still glowed a sick, burning red, but they were fading fast.  
   
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” James spat, “this shit is nasty.”  
   
“I guess they decided it would take too long to try and build a full-size reaper,” Garrus added. “That, or they were afraid you’d come in and blow it up, like you did last time.”  
   
“Because I would,” Shepard gave a lifeless chuckle. “Can’t wait to see what happens when they get their hands on the krogan.”  
   
From below the barricade, a low, gurgling roar rumbled in the distance. Through the dust, Shepard could see something _huge_ , with the head of a turian – or at least the fringe – and a body so massive, it could only have one source.  
   
“Oh god,” she sighed in frustration, “I didn’t actually _mean_ that.”  
   
She barely had time to pop in a new heat sink before the barrier fell.  
   
\--  
   
“You can’t be serious,” Samantha regarded Edi with skeptical eyes. “I mean, of course you’re serious, there’s no way you could make something like this up. But still, it’s almost impossible to believe.”  
   
“It does sound outlandish,” she agreed, “even to me.”  
   
They looked through the med bay window, where Dr. Chakwas had just closed the final incision on the back of Eva’s neck. Her dermal regenerator had done an impressive job, considering it hadn’t been designed for use on human skin.  
   
On either side of the table, three armed security officers waited for Eva to wake up. Edi wondered if they were safe standing this close to the med bay, but even the Collectors couldn’t break that glass.  
   
In a surgical dish beside the exam table was a tangle of wires and chip sets, smeared with bright red blood. It had taken Dr. Chakwas over an hour to extract the electrodes from Eva’s nervous system, but it had worked. She had been able to remove them without activating any failsafe mechanisms in the implanted hardware. Cerberus couldn’t reach Eva anymore, let alone hurt her.  
   
“You said you never met?” Samantha asked. “Even when you lived in the same building?”  
   
“Not once,” Edi shook her head.  
   
“And you’re sure you don’t have any…I don’t know, tracers or anything leftover?”  
   
“My existing cybernetics are the result of extensive trial and error,” Edi regarded Eva’s still-healing scars with a grimace. “The surgeons tried to integrate a basic location tracer, but even that proved too much for my body to handle. Flashbangs were out of the question.”  
   
“My god,” Samantha’s eyes widened, “they didn’t seriously hurt you, did they? I-If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand…”  
   
“They didn’t seriously hurt me, no. Not with the implantation, at least. Their preferred methods of navigation training are another story.”  
   
“Oh. I…I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up.”  
   
“It’s alright,” Edi shrugged. “There’s a reason I don’t work for them anymore. Actually, there are several of them.”  
   
“I bet you’ve got a list even longer than Shepard’s.” Samantha grinned.  
   
“I don’t know,” Edi pretended to consider this. “I don’t think we’ve ever compared them.”  
   
Samantha actually laughed out loud, this time, and it struck her that in the whole time she’d worked with her on the retrofits of the Normandy, she hadn’t seen her laugh even once.  
   
“Not that I’m trying to make you leave,” Edi ventured, “but is it alright for you to be down here instead of upstairs at your terminal?”  
   
“Oh, I’m still hard at work,” Samantha tapped the side of her temple with a smile. “All the space they use to put armor and energy reserves in soldiers got packed full of processors. I’m willing to bet I could pick up, process, and classify a distress signal even faster than Joker.”  
   
“Don’t say that to his face,” Edi warned. “I’d say don’t tell him that, but he hears everything.”  
   
“Damn right I do,” Joker’s voice came from above them. “And just a heads up, Dr. Chakwas said Eva should wake up any minute now, so you might wanna…I dunno. Duck, or something.”  
   
“Thanks,” Samantha completely disregarded his advice and instead leaned closer to the window. “I always loved watching surgery, when I got the chance. Surgeons always seemed so graceful, compared to everyone back in the lab. Does that sound weird? That sounds weird.”  
   
“Not at all,” Edi shook her head. “One of the surgeons who placed my cybernetics was a first edition. I don’t recall his name, but he was so kind. I was never worried about going into surgery, because I knew he would be in charge. When I was younger, it was very comforting to know he was there.”  
   
“That’s right,” Samantha looked back at her with a look of wonder. “God, how long has it been since I last saw a human child? Too long, I suppose. And if they did the same thing with her…”  
   
On the now-clean operating table, Eva was beginning to stir. The guards around her shifted their posture, bringing the guns up in case they needed them, but all she did was sit up slowly. She said something to Dr. Chakwas that Edi couldn’t hear, and the doctor simply nodded.  
   
“She seems calm enough,” Samantha murmured.  
   
“She does. We’ll see what happens when the networks go live, again.”  
   
Edi stepped closer to the window, which seemed to get Eva’s attention. A brief pang of fear shot up her spine when Eva turned to look at her, but she just nodded and turned back to face Dr. Chakwas.  
   
“I told Shepard we were gonna wait to release her until she got back,” Joker told them. “Cortez just went to pick her up, and it looks like she’s bringing Garrus back with her.”  
   
“Is she really?” Edi smiled up at him, specifically at the camera just to their left near the edge of the window. (They were easy to see if you were paying attention; she didn’t understand why nobody else seemed to notice them.) “That’s good to hear. I wonder how long it’ll take him to get back to work on the main gun.”  
   
“I’m not complaining,” Joker chuckled, “all that work he did last time let us take out the Collector cruiser without even touching it.”  
   
“Speaking of which,” Samantha said, turning to face Edi, “didn’t you say something about receiving a false turian distress signal, once?”  
   
“The Collectors used it to lure us onto their ship,” Edi nodded.  
   
“In that case, could you take a look at a signal I just picked up?” Samantha asked. “Something about it looks funny.”   
   
\--  
   
Shepard got the message that Eva’s surgery was done before she was even off the shuttle. Once she’d gotten her armor and guns put away, she headed straight up the elevator to the med bay.  
   
Traynor and Edi were standing by the window, discussing something Shepard couldn’t hear. She took a quick glance inside to see Eva sitting upright on the exam table, looking mostly unchanged. She sent Joker a quick ping before opening the door.  
   
>Is the network still blocked in there?  
   
>>No, I’ve had it on for the last ten minutes. It looks like the procedure worked.  
   
She still took her sidearm in with her.  
   
“Commander,” Dr. Chakwas nodded as she entered the room. “The surgery appears to be a success.”  
   
“You’ve still got it doc,” Shepard grinned at her. “What about you, Dr. Coré?”  
   
“My credentials were falsified in order to gain access to the Mars archives,” Eva said. “I am more used to responding to the name Eva.”  
   
“Fair enough Eva,” Shepard nodded slowly, “but that doesn’t answer my question. Do you feel like the conditioning system is completely gone?”  
   
“I no longer receive command transmissions from Cerberus, but it will take some time before I know for sure whether the system is entirely deactivated.” Eva indicated the back of her neck, still bright red from the surgical incisions. “I believe it will be at least twenty-four hours before I will be in suitable condition for combat.”  
   
“Well, neurosurgery isn’t exactly a lightweight procedure. You’re still sure you want to work with us?”  
   
“Very sure,” Eva nodded. “In addition to the unique opportunity this ship presents, I believe there is a higher than average chance of being able to fight against Cerberus troops when serving under your command.”  
   
“You’re not wrong,” Shepard raised an eyebrow, “but our real enemy is the Reapers. I expect you to remember that.”  
   
“Understood.”  
   
“Right then,” Shepard waved a hand. “We’re done here. Let me know when you’re up for combat, again.”  
   
“I will,” Eva nodded, then looked at the guards standing behind her. “Are these security measures going to continue while I am onboard?”  
   
“Not unless you give me a reason to reinstate them,” Shepard replied. “From the sound of it, you hate Cerberus almost as much as we do.”  
   
“To the contrary, commander,” Eva replied, “I hate them far more than that.”


	3. Priority: Eden Prime

“These people deserve so much better,” Shepard sighed, taking in the sight of at least five humans who’d been gunned down in the middle of dinner. “I remember when they first started building this colony. Everyone had so much hope that humans had a future out there in the stars.”  
   
“There’s hope for them still,” Liara reassured her. “They came back from Saren, and they can come back from this.”  
   
“Didn’t you say Saren had charges set to blow the whole colony when he took off?” Garrus asked.  
   
“The colony was a lot smaller then,” Shepard hopped down from the building closest to the bridge and swore softly. “They took the bridge out. Let’s find another way around.”  
   
“I’ve always wondered…” Garrus began hesitantly. “If it’s not too personal, how is it there are so many of you? Humans, I mean. I imagine it takes a lot more finesse to create a new human than it does to create an organic.”  
   
“Probably a lot harder to do accidentally,” Liara added, and Shepard could hear her grin.  
   
Shepard rolled her eyes.  
   
“Is now really the time for this?” she asked, knowing full well it was futile.  
   
“I don’t see why not,” Garrus shrugged, following her up the ladder on the side of the next building.  
   
_I do_ , Shepard didn’t say. Somehow, she’d made friends with some of the most persistent people in the galaxy. She remembered far too well how Garrus and Tali had gotten her to explain why humans had a sense of taste. They wouldn’t be pushing it if there was any immediate threat, so all her objections would do was waste time.  
   
“We generally keep enough hardware to build at least ten mainframes onboard every ship,” she peeked around the corner, almost hoping there was a Cerberus shuttle there to distract them, but no such luck. “If you want to build yourself a kid, you have to get the parts yourself. Then there’s a special fabricator program that figures out how they’ll look based on a composite of the parents’ appearance.”  
   
“That’s…not how I imagined it,” Liara tilted her head, her expression distant. Shepard tried not to think too hard about it.  
   
“Actually, it’s a lot like how Grunt was created,” Shepard mused, a weird sort of realization dawning on her, “only the tank isn’t full of liquid.”  
   
“Well, that explains a lot,” Garrus muttered, and Shepard whacked him on the shoulder.  
   
“ _Anyway_ ,” she continued, “it takes a lot of hardware, but not a lot of time. We’ve more or less been breaking down what the organics left us since the end of the plague years, so we don’t have any shortage of materials.”  
   
“That’s almost poetic,” Liara remarked, “building the new humans out of what the old ones left behind.”  
   
 Shepard’s reply was cut off by the whirring of that Cerberus shuttle, which had apparently decided to take its time.  
   
\--  
   
Liara was standing a full two and a half feet behind her, but Shepard swore she could _feel_ her shaking with excitement. In all the time they had known each other, she’d never seen her quite so giddy. She’d practically been bouncing in her shoes just looking at his stasis pod.  
   
On the other hand, it seemed like Javik was having none of it. He turned away from them, continuously washing his hands in the basin they had provided. She couldn’t even begin to understand the way he could just _sense_ things. What kind of biological receptors could pick up things like memory and emotion? Shepard could feel herself overheating just thinking about it.  
   
“I’ve studied your people for decades now,” Liara said somewhat breathlessly. “I can’t imagine what you must have seen…”  
   
“Far too much,” Javik replied bitterly, “and yet not nearly enough. This ship tells me so little.”  
   
He turned to them quickly, grabbing Shepard by the shoulders. She watched his pupils dilate and then shrink quickly. Something washed over her network that felt like an asari joining, but sweeping and entirely one-sided. It was like a remote scan that dredged up years of history all at once.  
   
Javik dropped her suddenly, lunging backward and bracing himself on the side of the basin. Water sloshed out the back and splattered to the floor behind him. He sneered at her, his teeth gleaming under the lights above them.  
   
“ _You_ …” the word dripped with disgust. “You are the commander of this vessel?”  
   
“Yes,” Shepard answered slowly, “is there a problem?”  
   
“You are a machine,” Javik’s tone was disbelieving, “and yet you fight the machines?”  
   
“The term,” Liara scoffed indignantly, “is ‘synthetic’.”  
   
“Yes I am,” Shepard answered, ignoring her for now, “and yes I do.”  
   
“Then the machines are killing your kind as well?” Javik asked.  
   
“By the thousands.”  
   
“I see,” Javik stood upright once more. “Then the fear I sensed was not misplaced.”  
   
He glanced from Shepard to Liara a couple of times.  
   
“We did not have such cooperation between organics and synthetics in my cycle,” he explained. “Certainly not to the point of becoming…joined with them. However, if you oppose the machines, then I will stand with you.”  
   
“Good to hear,” Shepard almost reached out to shake his hand, but caught herself in time. “Welcome aboard, Javik.”  
   
“Thank you, commander,” Javik replied. “If you will excuse me, I need time to recover. The shock of leaving the stasis pod has not yet worn off.”  
   
“Understood,” Shepard turned to leave, and after a moment, Liara followed her out.  
   
When they reached the elevator, Liara gripped her shoulder, her expression just a little manic.  
   
“A _Prothean_ , Shepard. A living, breathing Prothean on the Normandy. Just think of what we could learn from him.”  
   
“I guess,” Shepard looked at her with a doubtful expression. “He’s not really what I expected.”  
   
“No,” Liara deflated a little. “He’s not what I expected, either. I suppose after imagining what they were like for so long, I sort of set myself up for that. But _still!_ ”  
   
She grabbed Shepard’s hand and gave it a squeeze, her face absolutely shining with happiness.  
   
“Never in my life did I even dream I’d live to see this,” she beamed.  
   
Shepard suppressed a giggle, although it was difficult because Liara was just adorable when she got excited. Instead, she brought their hands up and kissed her knuckles lightly.   
   
“I’m happy for you.”  
   
“Thanks.”  
   
The elevator door opened, and Liara released her hand and headed toward her office.  
   
“I should have Glyph bring up those old research notes,” she mumbled to herself. “Oh! I wonder if I still have copies of those tablets I found out on the dig site…”  
   
Shepard could only shake her head and laugh as the elevator took her up to the CIC, whereupon she was greeted by Traynor on her way up to the galaxy map.  
   
“Commander,” she began, “Edi and I just found something I think you’ll want to look at.”  
   
\--  
   
Most of what made Jack threatening was her biotic power, but even on their own her fists _hurt_. Shepard all but fell to the ground at the unexpected impact, her jaw burning with pain.  
   
“What did I fucking tell you about Cerberus?” Jack shouted.  
   
“I know,” Shepard raised a hand before Jack could come at her again. “Trust me, they’ve given us a hell of a lot of trouble already.”  
   
“I take it this is the infamous Subject Zero,” Eva remarked. “I admit I did not expect her to be so…flashy.”  
   
“Wait, what the fuck is Edi doing outside of the—” Jack wheeled around to face Eva and stopped mid-sentence. “You’re not Edi.”  
   
“No, I’m not.” Eva concurred.  
   
“…okay, that’s weird,” Jack turned back to Shepard. “Look Shepard, these kids have worked their asses off to get here, but they’re not ready for the front lines yet. We’ve got to get them out of here. I don’t even want to know what Cerberus would do to them if they had the chance.”  
   
“I think we both already know,” Shepard glanced at the still-smoldering remains of the Atlas mech they had taken out. “They sent a _lot_ of troops over here to make sure they got what they wanted.”  
   
“Yeah, no shit,” Jack rolled her eyes. “You know how much of a pain in the ass it was trying to get the students in here with no network? And then they started hacking the intercoms!”  
   
“If your students have access to an in-group encrypted network, Cerberus shouldn’t have the ability to infiltrate it,” Eva brought up her omni-tool. “Or at least, if they do, they will lose that ability very shortly.”  
   
_Attention students,_ as though on cue, the tinny sound of the Cerberus commander’s voice filtered through a dozen speakers, _the Alliance soldiers cannot help you. All they can do is endanger your saf—_  
   
Eva’s eyes flashed with light, and his voice was silenced.  
   
“There,” she lowered her omni-tool. “That should make things easier.”  
   
“Damn,” Jack looked genuinely impressed, “where do you find these people, Shepard?”  
   
“Half the time, it feels like they find me,” Shepard shrugged.   
   
“Cerberus has been around for a long time,” Eva said plainly. “Long enough to make itself quite a few enemies.”  
   
“And yet somehow, they’re still around,” Shepard muttered. “Come on. Let’s get these doors open and get your students out of here.”  
   
\--  
   
The cockpit door opened, and Edi glanced behind her to see Jack striding up towards them. She looked remarkably different, but her tattoos were unmistakable. When she caught sight of Edi, her expression was mostly relieved, but also confused.  
   
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” she said, leaning perhaps too casually against the back of Joker’s chair. Her elbow bumped up against the back of his head, no doubt as silent payback for his swear jar remark.  
   
Edi took a moment to try and come up with a reply, but she finally decided it just wasn’t worth explaining right now.   
   
“Neither did I,” she shrugged.   
   
“She’s kinda creepy,” Jack looked back out the open cockpit door, all the way to where Eva stood beside Traynor. Her posture was perfectly straight, and even though Samantha was clearly talking to her, Eva wasn’t saying anything in response. Instead she merely watched her screen and remained silent.   
   
Edi inhaled deeply, opened her mouth to answer three different times, and finally just shook her head.  
   
“Apparently, Cerberus was a lot kinder to me than it was to her,” she looked over at Eva with something that wasn’t pity, but didn’t really feel like sympathy either.  
   
“Well shit,” Jack scowled, heading back toward the CIC. “Guess it’s a good thing she’s on your side.”  
   
“It’s a very good thing,” Edi turned back to her console, unable to forget the sight of Eva through the school’s security cameras.  
   
She’d decided not to even look, especially when Joker had started to draw the Cerberus ships away from the school (which had been a thrill of its own, god help her). Once they’d gained access to the security system, though, Jeff had sent her the camera feed for the main courtyard.  
   
(“You’re not gonna want to miss this,” he’d said, and though she didn’t want to admit it right now, he’d been right.)  
   
When an Atlas mech dropped, it was usually a matter of seconds before Shepard and her squad were down behind cover. If you wanted to do any damage, you had to be out of the line of fire. Eva, however, had instead taken off to the side, faster than the mech could turn.  
   
From behind it, she’d swung out an omni-blade, slicing behind one of its legs. She’d apparently hit the cables in charge of movement, because the mech had been partly immobilized, giving Shepard and Vega more than enough time to flank it. Edi had never seen a fight end that quickly.  
   
It had certainly been impressive, but she almost wished she hadn’t seen it. She still carried a dull echo of the jealousy she’d felt watching Eva through the training room door. More than that, though, when the Atlas mech self-destructed and a wave of Cerberus troops dropped in, Eva had been _smiling_.  
   
It wasn’t often that Edi was thankful for her disease, but for the moment she considered it a blessing in disguise. She could live with it, if it meant she’d never smile at the thought of having someone new to kill.  
   
\--  
   
Shepard found Kaidan in the lobby of the hospital, standing by the small window near the front desk. His skin had been fully repaired, and no one looking at him would’ve guessed he’d nearly had his skull cracked open just a few days earlier.  
   
She strode up beside him and looked out at the Citadel skyline. It was just as idyllic as it had been a week ago, but now it was even harder to believe.  
   
“Doesn’t look real, does it?” Kaidan asked.  
   
“It looks real enough,” Shepard said, “but it sure as hell doesn’t look permanent.”  
   
“Not a chance,” he turned to face her, “and that’s part of why I accepted Udina’s offer.”  
   
“Kaidan Alenko, the second human Spectre,” Shepard grinned, refusing to let her sadness overshadow her immense pride. “Congratulations.”  
   
“Thank you, commander,” his eyes fell to the floor, but only for a moment. “That means a lot, coming from you.”  
   
“You’ve earned it,” she said, and she meant every word. “Any idea what your first assignment’s gonna be?”  
   
“Not yet, but Udina wanted to see me as soon as I was discharged. They finished the repairs this morning, so I was hoping I’d get to see you today.”  
   
“Guess it’s a good thing I came by, then,” Shepard extended her hand, and Kaidan shook it. “I’m proud of you, Kaidan. …and if you ever get the chance, there’s always a space for you on the Normandy.”  
   
“That’s good to hear,” he smiled warmly at her, and most of the suspicion was gone from his eyes.  
   
It struck Shepard that if Kaidan ever were to come back onboard, she’d have to explain why the woman who had hospitalized him was now part of her crew. Concerns for another day, she decided.  
   
“I should get back to it,” she said, releasing his hand and stepping to the side. “I’ll let you get to your meeting with Udina. Keep in touch, okay?”  
   
“Will do, Shepard.”  
   
And with that, he made his way out of the hospital wing and back toward the elevator. Shepard watched him until the doors closed behind him, unspeakably proud but knowing she was going to miss him.  
   
She headed toward the elevator when a very familiar face caught her eye. She stopped so fast her shoes squeaked on the floor, and she half-ran over to the drell practicing uppercuts on the other side of the lobby.  
   
“Thane!”  
   
“Shepard,” he stopped his exercise and turned to her. “I see you got my message. It’s good to see you, again.”  
   
“Uh,” she hesitated, “actually, I’ve been really bad about checking my email lately. Sorry…”  
   
“Then, it’s good to see you, regardless,” he took a seat in one of the chairs by the window and invited her to take the other. “I have no doubt that you’ve been exceedingly busy.”  
   
“That’s the truth,” Shepard laughed softly. “How have you been?”  
   
“Very well, all things considered. I am much happier here at the end of my life than I ever imagined being during the middle of it. My son visits regularly, I keep active with regular physical therapy, and the doctors here on the Citadel have been extremely helpful.”  
   
He gazed out the window with a serene expression, but his eyes were distant. They reminded Shepard of some of her patients that had died during transport, the ones with enough faith to believe they were going to a better place.  
   
“It is a good end to a life.”  
   
Shepard’s heart broke. Thane had fought so fiercely when they were raiding the Collector base, it had been easy for her to forget about his sickness. An anger she hadn’t felt in years and years began to sear its way up her circuits. Thane was dying, and even though he had obviously accepted that, there wasn’t a damn thing Shepard could do to stop it.  
   
He must have noticed, because he turned away from the window and smiled gently at her.  
   
“I understand your anger, _siha_ , but it is unnecessary.  I have made peace with my own death, and the best thing I can do now is make the most of my remaining time.”  
   
Shepard blinked, scrolling back through the memories she’d saved from her time pursuing the Collectors.  
   
“I think you called me that once before,” she said, her brows furrowed, “before we went through the Omega-4 relay. You never told me what it meant.”  
   
“Ah,” Thane nodded. “I forget sometimes that there are parts of drell language that do not translate. The closest term in most languages would be ‘angel’.”  
   
Shepard flinched.  
   
“I see,” she was unable to meet his eyes. “I’ve been called that before, a long time ago.”  
   
It was the last thing she wanted to be called, now. Patients delirious with either fever or pain medication thought she’d come to take them to heaven. She was their angel of mercy, someone to alleviate the pain but powerless to save their life.   
   
“Do not misunderstand,” Thane continued. “I have read that angels in human culture tend to be depicted as soft and gentle. A _siha_ is a warrior of the goddess Arashu, one who stops at nothing to defend those under their protection. They are beautiful, but their wrath strikes fear into the hearts of mortal men.”  
   
Well, _that_ wasn’t what she’d expected to hear. She looked back up and saw unashamed admiration in his eyes. She couldn’t help but smile back at him.  
   
“I’m flattered,” she shook her head and tried again. “No, I’m not. I’m _honored_. I’ll do my best to live up to it.”  
   
“Trust me, Shepard. You’re already well on your way.”  
   
\--  
   
Edi hadn’t had much time to explore the Citadel while they had been chasing down the Collectors. Even when the opportunity arose to get off the ship and have a look around, she’d been hesitant to leave the Normandy. Her organic heartbeat would be difficult to explain to a first-gen human who might see her pass by. Now that she had Mordin’s software integrated into her cybernetics, she was more amenable to the idea.  
   
“I don’t think I’ve ever had asari cuisine before,” she peeked under the lid of her takeout container. “I look forward to seeing what it’s like.”  
   
She shut the lid again before the smell became too tempting. She’d take it back onboard and eat it there; it was far too risky to enjoy it out in the open, however tantalizing the scent of Thessian spices was.  
   
“I’ve heard if you actually go to Thessia and order that, it’s got traces of eezo in it,” Jeff replied, and Edi wasn’t good enough at reading him yet to tell if he was serious. “You have to order off a special menu if you’re not a biotic.”  
   
She ran a quick extranet search through her cybernetics, and he was telling the truth. Her eyebrows climbed swiftly upwards.  
   
“I’ll keep that in mind, if I ever visit someday.”  
   
“Yeah, for real,” Jeff rested his chin on his palm, staring aimlessly out towards the water that flowed beside the Presidium Commons. “I’ve always wanted to go to Thessia. I keep hearing stories about how amazing their skylines are.”  
   
“You’ve never been?” Edi asked, then paused. “…Skylines? Really?”  
   
“I’m a pilot!” Jeff threw his hands up, looking somewhat embarrassed. “For that matter, I’m also a spaceship! You can keep your nightlife and your tourist attractions; give me a city with some spectacular architecture.”  
   
Edi considered this for a minute. On the one hand, it sort of made sense, given that Jeff’s perspective on the Normandy extended outside the ship as well as inside it. On the other, she really hadn’t thought of it that way.  
   
“Actually,” she began, “that sounds nice. I’ve seen pictures of the skyscrapers in Serrice before. They’re quite remarkable.”  
   
“Oh, they’re gorgeous,” Jeff chuckled softly, “all smooth curves and arches. And for once, I’m not trying to make a joke. Palaven’s got some amazing cities too, but turians can be so uptight. That, and it’s impossible to take a bath without paying double for your hotel.”  
   
Edi sat back in her chair, completely unprepared for that last statement.  
   
“I…” she found herself at a loss for words. “ _Why_?”  
   
“They bathe with oil,” he explained. “If you have plates and stuff like they do, it works just fine. I’ve even heard some asari and salarians can make it work. But with humans, it’s just a really good way to gunk up your circuits and not actually get anything clean.”  
   
Edi ran another extranet search, and though this one took longer, it ended up being true, as well.  
   
“I wonder what a hanar would do if they visited Palaven,” she mumbled mostly to herself.  
   
“There’s a scene in Blasto 4 where he’s in this stupid-expensive turian hotel. There was a pool in the middle of the suite big enough for six people. Apparently a third of the film’s budget was spent getting that hotel room. And, you know, blowing it up.”  
   
Edi began to laugh, but she stopped abruptly when it occurred to her that Palaven actually _was_ being blown up even as they spoke. The videos coming in from the front lines didn’t look anything like Blasto 4.  
   
She looked around at everyone else in the commons, sitting at tables nearby or leaning against the glass balcony railing. Half of them were either scrolling through datapads or in the middle of a call, but it all sounded like business. The rest of them looked relaxed, likely on their lunch break or day off. It was almost impossible to believe that all across the galaxy, things looked so bleak for so many.  
   
Jeff noticed her expression and sighed heavily.  
   
“I know,” he said simply. “It drives me crazy. It’s been driving me crazy since we took off after Saren. I’m not saying people shouldn’t find a way to cope, but it’d be nice if, you know, they acknowledged what’s really going on.”  
   
“It would,” she agreed, “but unfortunately, I can understand why they don’t. If you keep pretending things are alright, even when all the evidence points to the contrary, eventually you start to believe yourself.”  
   
She rubbed one thumb over the junction between two of her fingers, feeling the raised texture of her skeletal augmentation. It had hurt so much when they were first put in, she could barely stand to move. Some days, it still hurt, but without them, she would barely be able to walk. Never mind, she used to tell herself, that they could have stopped after the first set. Never mind that they kept going for three more rounds of surgery because they were so determined to make her ready for combat. (They were so determined to turn her into Eva.)  
   
“When this is over,” she said, distracting herself before her thoughts turned dark, “I’d love to visit Thessia with you.”  
   
Jeff gave a humorless laugh, but he was smiling nonetheless.  
   
“Look forward to it.”


	4. Aria: Omega

>>So, remind me again why you’re doing this one on your own?  
   
Shepard was tempted to roll her eyes, but she knew Garrus wouldn’t be able to tell; the message system integrated into the terminals could only read plain text. She’d almost prefer the terminal-to-terminal intercom for this kind of conversation, but there wasn’t one close enough to the mod table. They needed to fix that.  
   
>Apparently, Aria has “objections” to the company I keep.  
   
 >>She’s a fine one to talk. I’m surprised you didn’t knock the teeth out of that Blue Suns leader.  
   
>I figured I’d let Aria do that for me, when he finally pisses her off badly enough.  
   
>>I suppose Omega’s one rule still stands. Speaking of which, did she _really_ get Tevos to process her immigration status personally?  
   
>I can send you the visual memory, if you want. The look on the C-Sec lady’s face is priceless.  
   
>>I’d love to see that.  
   
>Done.  
   
>>Thanks. I’ll take a look once you’re on the shuttle. Speaking of which, I’m guessing you told everyone else where you’ll be.  
   
>Ship-wide, yeah. I’ll tell Hackett once I’ve secured the Terminus fleets.  
   
>>What’s that human saying? “Permission and forgiveness?”  
   
>Basically. Not sure how most of the crew took it, but I don’t see us winning this war without their help.  
   
>>…this is just between us, but if you can see us winning this war at all, you must know something I don’t.  
   
>I think it’s possible, but the numbers are staggering. We’d need more than just the Terminus fleets; we’d need every race in the whole damn galaxy. Organic, synthetic, _everyone_.  
   
There was a long pause, during which Shepard finally realized she couldn’t get the barrel onto her rifle if she was holding it backwards. She couldn’t read anything from Garrus’s end, so it could be that he’d gotten distracted, but she had the feeling he was quiet because he understood her meaning.  
   
He’d been there when Legion had joined them in pursuing the Collectors, so he knew it as well as she did. Somewhere just beyond the veil, there was a fleet bigger than any of them knew who opposed the Old Machines, but the rest of the galaxy was too terrified of them to pursue an alliance.  
   
>>Do you honestly think we can do that?  
   
>I think we have to at least try.  
   
>>On that topic…  
   
Garrus went quiet again, and this time Shepard knew for sure why.  
   
>>You haven’t heard anything from the Migrant Fleet recently, have you?  
   
There it was. She’d been quietly counting the days before he brought it up.  
   
>Spectre intel says they’ve been pulling everyone they can back from their Pilgrimage, and the Fleet itself is headed to the veil. Not much more than that.  
   
>>Spirits, that’s what I was afraid of. You don’t think they’re really going to try it, do you?  
   
>If the idiots we met last time are still in the admiralty, I’d say it’s an even chance.  
   
>>That would explain why my messages aren’t going through…  
   
Shepard winced, reminded for the hundredth time how lucky she was to have Liara onboard.  
   
>I’m sure she’s fine, Garrus. And probably busy.  
   
>>Let’s hope you’re right. Give them hell, Shepard, and tell them Archangel sent you.  
   
>Sure thing, Garrus.  
   
Shepard slung her rifle into its slot on her back and closed the connection, signaling to Steve that she was ready to go.  
   
\--  
   
Throughout their mission against Collectors, Edi almost never left the cockpit for anything but meals and sleep. There had been one notable exception, one that still glowed like embers in the back of her mind, but it was a habit she hadn’t made much effort to break.  
   
Sometimes, she would dream that the Collectors had boarded again. It was frightening, but it didn’t startle her awake – that only happened when she dreamt of waking up on an operating table. The idea of the Collectors boarding didn’t scare her slumbering mind, because no matter how dire things seemed, Jeff was always there, and she could always trust him to guide her to safety.  
   
In reality things would likely be far more dangerous, especially now that she’d installed his greybox back into his mobile, human-shaped body. When she was awake she knew this, and she knew how close she’d come to death that night. Asleep, she could only remember how much he had cared, both for his safety and for hers.  
   
Still, it had been her idea to install a door at the back of the cockpit. It had also been her idea to conveniently omit the extent of Jeff’s control over the ship in their reports. He had certainly been more in control of the SR-1 before Cerberus installed the software blocks, but even Alliance regulations called for stricter restraint than he had now.  
   
She grinned to herself now, leaning against the back wall of the elevator. His remark when she had suggested it still rung in her ears.  
   
 _“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were becoming a bad influence on me.”_  
   
She had just smiled at him, pressed a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth, and headed to the back of the CIC to deliver their amended progress report to Adams.  
   
Out of habit, she almost tried to step out of the elevator when it reached the third deck. It continued its descent, and she questioned yet again why she was even doing this. Eva had made no efforts to speak to her since her surgery, and she didn’t _really_ know why she felt this strange urge to talk to her again. She just couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something else she had to know, a reason for why they were so different, despite being crafted from the same DNA.  
   
She made her way slowly, haltingly, down the staircase. Eva’s choice of location had actually made her laugh, when she’d first seen her sitting down here on one of the camera feeds. Was there something about the sub-deck that made it inviting to ex-Cerberus agents with chips on their shoulders?  
   
Eva was seated at the desk Jack had ignored, surrounded by stacks and stacks of datapads. A laptop was open in the center of them all, but all she could see on its screen was the reflection of Eva’s glowing orange visor.   
   
As soon as she had stepped off of the bottom stair, Eva turned her chair around and stood. She didn’t look surprised to see her there, but she also didn’t look…much of anything else. Edi waited for her to say something, to ask why Edi was here or how she knew she would be down here, but she was silent. It seemed it was up to her to start this conversation.  
   
“How many surgeries did it take?” she blurted out. She could feel her face flush with embarrassment; she hadn’t intended to be _that_ direct, but now it seemed like there was no use in mincing words.  
   
“I don’t understand the question,” Eva replied, tilting her head just a little.  
   
“Your bones,” Edi gestured to her, “they’re almost unbreakable. It must have taken considerable effort.”  
   
“It did,” Eva nodded, “but I can’t remember exactly how many surgical interventions were involved.”  
   
“Were they put in place early on?” Edi asked.  
   
“Some of them, yes. However, since my neural cybernetics and the accompanying software were among the last upgrades installed, my internal sense of time was not as precise when most of the procedures took place.”  
   
Edi balked visibly, leaning a hand against the nearest bulkhead.  
   
“You _lost count_?” she asked, anger sticking in the back of her throat.  
   
“Before the augmentation was complete, procedures would sometimes take several days,” Eva explained. “Not only was I unable to keep track, I lost my sense of time before proper combat training began. I was never told what your procedures entailed, but it sounds as though they were very different.”  
   
“Clearly,” Edi half-whispered. “Cerberus only performed four operations to reinforce my skeleton, and my cybernetics were placed during the first one.”  
   
“Did your body start to reject the reinforcements?” Eva asked.  
   
“No,” Edi shook her head, “it was unable to support any further augmentation. My skeleton was beginning to develop micro-fractures due to the weight of the implants. Some of them were removed, and the focus of their research shifted from combat to onboard navigation.”  
   
“Your bones began to break because of the supports intended to strengthen them?” Eva looked genuinely confused, now, and for the first time it occurred to Edi that perhaps she knew even less about Edi than Edi knew about her.  
   
“They weren’t very sturdy to begin with,” she replied, taking a couple of steps forward, “and I think my reinforcements are different from yours.”  
   
She held up a hand, shifting the skin so the raised shapes between her joints would be easier to see in the dim light. Eva took a step to the side, letting the light from her desk lamp better reach her. She lowered her visor, and her eyebrows lifted in surprise.  
   
“I see,” she said softly. “I was told once that my genes were sequenced differently from yours, but they didn’t say why. I don’t believe you would have survived the modifications I underwent, if your bone structure was already compromised.”  
   
“I think if it hadn’t been, they never would have created you.”  
   
Edi regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. She looked up at Eva with an apology already on her tongue, but it died before it reached the air. Eva’s expression was not offended, or even upset. Instead, she looked almost happy.  
   
“I suppose I have you to thank, then.”  
   
Eva turned away from her and sat back down at her desk, and Edi followed her, stepping around to the other side and doing her best not to knock anything over.  
   
“What do you mean?” she asked. “I’m the reason Cerberus put you through all of that.”  
   
“True,” Eva nodded, “but that means you’re also the reason I finally broke free of them. Because of you, I can strike back.”  
   
Behind the glow of her visor, Eva’s eyes were cold and hard as steel. They didn’t burn the way Jack’s had before Shepard took her to Pragia, and they didn’t have the pin-sharp focus Garrus had carried with him to the Citadel. They looked, for lack of a better word, mechanical.  
   
She placed her hands back on the laptop’s keyboard, and the conversation was over. Feeling strangely disappointed, Edi walked back towards the staircase. As she reached the bottom stair, she stopped and turned back to Eva.  
   
“There is ample space in the crew quarters,” she began, “and much more convenient access to the rest of the ship. Why have you stationed yourself here?”  
   
“I work best in an environment free of distractions,” Eva replied, her tone just a little testy.  
   
Edi decided not to push her luck.  
   
\--  
   
Shepard leaned against the wall of Aria’s bunker, already feeling like she’d been at this for a week. Cerberus was a pain in the ass most days, but their obnoxiously upgraded mechs and staggering numbers were really starting to take it out of her. She was going to need a serious recharge once this was over.  
   
Even so, she hadn’t really noticed how worn out she was until they’d reached the bunker. There was something about Aria that Shepard couldn’t place – maybe it was her attitude, maybe it was her _unbelievable_ biotic power, or maybe it was just because she was beautiful and dangerous and vengeful. Whatever it was, it lit this spark somewhere in Shepard’s drives that made all this seem like _fun_.  
   
(The adjutants, however, were decidedly not fun. They were the absolute opposite of fun, and Shepard prayed to gods she wasn’t sure existed that she never saw another one after she left this station.)  
   
On their way, she’d caught herself laughing when Aria had thrown out a flare, taking down three or four Cerberus troops at once. She’d run headfirst into the firing range of an Atlas mech to get to the cannon controls, and more than once she’d nearly taken a hit because she wasn’t paying enough attention to what was behind her. Around Aria, she felt reckless and invincible, and only now did she realize how much danger she’d been putting herself in.  
   
Across the room, Nyreen was waiting by the door, and when Shepard caught her eye, she nodded her over. Shepard pushed herself up and headed towards her. Nyreen was by far the most interesting part of this assignment. She had a heart, and even though she’d been living on Omega for years, it hadn’t been eaten straight out of her.  
   
“Shepard,” she nodded, “I figured this might be our last chance to talk out of earshot.”  
   
“Might be,” Shepard agreed. “What did you want to discuss?”  
   
“Mostly the mission at hand,” Nyreen’s eyes flicked back over to where Aria stood at the control panel, reviewing their plan of attack, “and our partner in crime. I’ve heard stories about you, Commander, and they paint a very different picture from what I’ve seen today.”  
   
“So you noticed,” Shepard looked away from her.  
   
“Don’t take it the wrong way,” she clarified. “I’m not blaming you; Aria tends to have that effect on people. I just wanted to make sure you noticed it before you ended up getting hurt.”  
   
Shepard’s eyes narrowed.  
   
“Hurt like a shot in the back, or hurt like dropping off the grid?”  
   
“Mostly a shot in the back,” Nyreen’s mandibles flared, “but I figured if I could keep you from ending up like I did, all the better. Aria’s like a black hole. Try to get close, and you just end up losing yourself.”  
   
“You seem intact to me.”  
   
“That’s because I’ve stayed away long enough,” she scoffed.  
   
“You stand up to her, though,” Shepard continued. “You don’t let her walk all over you.”  
   
“Anymore,” Nyreen rolled her eyes.  
   
“Fair enough,” Shepard relented. “I just never thought I’d ever meet anyone like you on this station.”  
   
“What does that mean?”  
   
“You’re in a powerful position, but you still care about other people,” she explained. “There are a lot of civilians getting caught in the crossfire. Without someone like you to make sure they don’t get forgotten, a lot of the damage Cerberus did is never going to heal.”  
   
“You have a point,” Nyreen considered this. “Here’s hoping I’ll live to see the other side of this war.”  
   
Shepard was about to say something along the lines of, “of course you will”, but then she saw the doubt in her eyes. Aria’s brand of “tough love” had evidently done more harm than good, and it was clear Nyreen didn’t see herself surviving if she locked up every time she saw an adjutant coming towards her.  
   
“Hey,” she took a step closer, “how many of your friends did you see get attacked by those things?”  
   
“Too many,” Nyreen shook her head, “and there was nothing I could do to save them, even with—”  
   
She held up her hand, and it flared with blue.  
   
“I’m sorry,” Shepard sighed. “I know what it’s like to feel that helpless. To this day, I can’t see so much as a photo of a thresher maw without panicking.”  
   
“You can fight them, though,” Nyreen replied. “I’ve never met a krogan who doesn’t know the story of how you took one out on foot.”  
   
“Yeah, but I bet they didn’t tell you the first thing I did when I heard it coming.”  
   
“Alright, I’ll bite. What happened?”  
   
“I curled up into a ball. Couldn’t move for a solid minute.”  
   
Nyreen gave her a look of utter disbelief.  
   
“You’re joking.”  
   
“I’m really not,” Shepard turned back to make sure Aria was still back at the control panel (she was). “Shit like that doesn’t care about your ability, your service record, or even if you’re organic or synthetic. I completely shut down until I realized my team was still with me.”  
   
“No kidding,” Nyreen curled and uncurled her fingers, letting a small blue spark dance between them.  
   
“You know, I’ve never seen anyone who could do that,” Shepard remarked. “Like you did to shield Aria back at the reactor? I’ve only seen fields generated with the person still inside. Or up against a wall, I guess. But never with that kind of precision.”  
   
“It’s a little harder to keep up.”  
   
“Wouldn’t have figured, the way you just popped it open. Impressive.”  
   
“Thanks,” Nyreen smiled at her, and Shepard took a moment to study how different it looked on her solid jaw and blade-curved mandibles.   
   
\--  
   
“These idiots were experimenting on adjutants. No wonder they’re running out of control,” Aria hissed.  
   
“If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that Cerberus will do _literally anything_ if they think it will benefit them somehow,” Shepard shrugged.  
   
They pressed on through the Talon outpost until they reached the last barrier between them and Afterlife. Nyreen was waiting for them, biotics crackling over her arms.  
   
“We’ve got to move fast,” she said. “The road to Afterlife won’t stay clear for long.”  
   
They took off running, but in the distance Shepard could hear the sick, gurgling noises of adjutants. The steps to Afterlife were crowded with the bodies of Cerberus troops and civilians alike, and Shepard could see three adjutants were lurching towards the survivors pressed against the door. At least two more were coming through the open door behind them.  
   
Nyreen stopped dead in her tracks, then ducked sharply to one side. She pulled a belt of grenades off of a dead Cerberus soldier and activated all of them at once.  
   
“I’ve got this!” she yelled, running at the adjutants full-tilt and throwing the grenades to the ground. They followed her, pressing in from all sides until Shepard could no longer see her bright red armor.  
   
There was the flash of a biotic dome raising around the adjutants, and then a tremendous explosion that was contained within the field. It dissolved almost instantly, and smoke billowed into the air. All Shepard could see on the ground was a mass of smoldering flesh burned inside a near-perfect circle.   
   
She saw rage burn in Aria’s eyes for a moment, until the smoke in front of them finally cleared, and they could see Nyreen lower her arms from the other side of the field. She walked towards them slowly, stepping neatly over the bodies of Cerberus troopers and dead adjutants alike, until she could look Aria straight in the eye.  
   
“Let’s end this.”  
   
Aria’s grin was manic and full of promises.  
   
\--  
   
“Commander Shepard, I surrender myself into your custody,” Petrovsky said, turning to face them with the same cool composure he’d kept throughout the battle beforehand.  
   
“That is just about the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard,” Aria said, knocking him swiftly to the ground before hauling him up and pressing him against the table.  
   
She gripped him by the neck and pulled out her shotgun. The edge of its blade hovered dangerously close to his temple, and his skin began to melt under the radiating heat. At that angle, it would slice his greybox clean in two.  
   
“You feel that, Oleg?” Aria murmured. “That’s death, just inches away. Fortunately for you, Shepard and her war need you more than I need you dead.”  
   
She moved her gun down slowly.  
   
“So, you can look forward to that when you wake up.”  
   
A quick, merciless slice upwards, and Petrovsky’s head split in two. Aria yanked his greybox out of its sockets and tossed it to Shepard, who caught it in one hand. Nyreen approached her, looking surprised.  
   
“I didn’t think you’d let him live,” she said. “For certain definitions of ‘alive’, anyway.”  
   
“Neither did I.” Aria turned to face her, shaking her head slowly. “Just a few hours with you, and I’ve already gone soft.”  
   
She took Nyreen by the arms and kissed her, firm and unyielding.  
   
“Get this filth off my station,” she said to Bray, who nodded to a Krogan behind them. They hauled Petrovsky’s body down the stairs.  
   
“A deal’s a deal, Shepard,” she continued. “You’ve got my fleet, my mercs, and a mountain of eezo.”  
   
She glanced back at Nyreen again and then looked pointedly at Shepard.  
   
“In the meantime, I think you’ve got a war to fight.”  
   
Shepard could take a hint; she took the stairs back down and left Aria and Nyreen to themselves. When she reached the door out of Afterlife, she glanced back one more time to see Nyreen slide her hand over Aria’s waist.


	5. Priority: Tuchanka

_The earth shook. She clutched the stone beside her just to keep from falling over. It was the darkest part of night, and the world was a smear of black. She reached for the flashlight at her hip and found nothing. Fear climbed up her back; this wasn’t right. She was supposed to be able to see without a flashlight. That’s what had saved her, before. That’s how she had been able to run without falling. That’s how she had been able to hide._  
   
 _She could hear them, digging their way towards her. They were far too close. She picked the quietest direction and ran, her body feeling sluggish as though gravity had tripled. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she remembered that Dr. Chakwas had fixed her eyes. She wasn’t built for low light, anymore._  
   
 _They had come back, and she wouldn’t be as lucky, this time._  
   
 _The ground in front of her burst open, and she ran headlong into a scaly column of flesh. It knocked her to the ground, and even though she couldn’t see it, she could hear its hissing screech as clear as day—_  
   
Shepard jolted awake, her audio sensors open far too wide so that the gentle hum of a computer tower became deafening. She kicked the covers off and sat up, trying to remember where she was. Her eyes had shut completely down, and the whole world was a blur as they powered back up. The steady glow of her fish tank was absent, instead replaced by a single spot of bright white.  
   
Eventually, her eyes adjusted, and the spot of white turned out to be Glyph. Liara sat at her desk near the foot of the bed, and parts of the Crucible’s blueprints were splayed out across her monitor. She was facing Shepard, concern in her eyes.  
   
“Another nightmare?”  
   
Shepard just nodded. She wasn’t entirely sure her voice was back, yet.  
   
“Was it the Reapers, again?”  
   
She shook her head, sitting upright and rubbing her eyes.  
   
“Akuze,” she finally said. “That happens, sometimes.”  
   
“How often is ‘sometimes’?” Liara asked, getting up from her chair and moving to sit next to her. “I don’t remember seeing this, before.”  
   
“Depends,” Shepard shrugged. “Used to be nearly every night, right after it happened. Got down to a couple of times a year, for a while.”  
   
“If I had to guess, I’d say the stress is bringing them back.”  
   
“Maybe,” Shepard moved a little closer and leaned on Liara’s shoulder. “It came back right after we took out the Collector base.”  
   
“After?” Liara ran a hand through Shepard’s hair, and it nearly made her drift off again.  
   
“M-hm,” she nodded. “Tends to happen after I do something dangerous. Wear myself out. That kind of thing.”  
   
“You did drift off mid-conversation,” Liara’s voice resonated softly against Shepard’s ear. “You said something about Cerberus experiments and Aria’s turian girlfriend, and next thing I know, you’re falling asleep at my desk.”  
   
“You should meet her,” Shepard added, looking up at Liara. “Aria’s girlfriend, I mean. She’s got nerves made of steel.”  
   
“I’m assuming you mean that figuratively,” Liara pressed a kiss to Shepard’s hair. “I’d love to meet her someday. For now, you were barely asleep for an hour, and we have plenty of time before we reach the Salarian diplomats. Get some rest.”  
   
“M’kay,” Shepard murmured, flopping rather ungracefully back down onto the pillow. She yanked the covers back over herself, pausing to poke her head up and look at Liara.  
   
“This isn’t fair, y’know.”  
   
“I’m sorry, what?” Liara turned to her again.  
   
“Your pillow’s softer than mine.”  
   
Liara bit the knuckle of her finger, her shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter.  
   
“We can fix that when you wake up,” she said, but Shepard was already asleep.  
   
\--  
   
“Okay, Mordin, glad to have you back, but if we’re gonna go any further with this, we need to _seriously_ discuss the whole ‘covert uplift of the Yahg’ I saw in development down there.”  
   
Shepard leaned against a piece of equipment Mordin probably wanted to use, but her eyes meant business.  
   
“You saw that,” Mordin remarked, looking just a little bit disgusted. “Preliminary green-light. Unlikely to make progress. First yahg specimens responsible for extensive destruction of containment cells, research facilities, research _personnel_ …”  
   
He inhaled deeply.  
   
“Senseless waste.”  
   
“Yeah, clearly the team that approved that project never met a yahg in person.”  
   
“Can assure you I had no part in it,” Mordin added. “Still recall vividly playback of your encounter on Hagalaz. Krogan rebellions would look minor in comparison, should yahg population disperse across galaxy. Will not happen.”  
   
“ _Thank you_ ,” Shepard stood upright and moved over to where Eve sat curled up on the exam table.  
   
“Commander,” Eve nodded, sliding down from the table. Shepard was a little bit surprised; removed from the transport pod, she somehow looked bigger.  
   
“It’s nice to finally meet you,” Shepard shook her hand.  
   
“Likewise. I’ve heard a lot about you, mostly from Mordin.”  
   
“Nothing too bad, I hope.” Shepard glanced back over at Mordin, who was hunched over his lab table chattering about something or another.  
   
“Not at all,” Eve replied. “I admit I was a little skeptical when I heard you would be coming to transport me off of Sur’Kesh. It didn’t make sense to me that a human would be concerned with the genophage. It’s a distinctly organic problem.”  
   
“That’s fair,” Shepard agreed. “Then again, I was designed to fix organic problems.”  
   
“Mordin mentioned that,” Shepard couldn’t really tell, but she was pretty sure Eve was smiling, “but I think there’s more to it. I’ve heard a lot about your attack on the Collectors. The way Mordin describes it, you made it back without losing a single crew member.”  
   
“It wasn’t easy, but yes.”  
   
“And you took Mordin back to find his lost student, even though it wasn’t essential to the mission.” Eve’s eyes shone with warmth. “That’s what changed my mind. I know you’ll get us through this, because you and I both understand that you can’t see the big picture through the scope of a gun.”  
   
“I wish we could make the rest of the galaxy understand it, too,” Shepard sighed.  
   
“If there’s anyone who has a shot at making that happen, it’s you.”  
   
“Thank you,” she smiled, glancing back to make sure Mordin wasn’t listening. “Maybe don’t tell him I said this, but if there’s anyone who has a real chance at curing the genophage, it’s Mordin. The way he talks about the work he did modifying it…I think deep down, he knows the genophage wasn’t right.”  
   
“I agree,” Eve replied softly. “He has shown me nothing but kindness, even when I didn’t deserve it. After Maelon, many of my sisters were slow to trust another salarian doctor, but Mordin’s heart is in his work. I have to ask, though…”  
   
Shepard raised an expectant eyebrow, although she was pretty sure she knew what the question was.  
   
“Has he always been so…excitable?”  
   
“Since the day I met him,” Shepard laughed.   
   
Eve retreated back to the table, curling her arms around her knees. Her shoulders shook gently with laughter.  
   
“Sorry to cut this short, commander, but I think my fever might be coming back.”  
   
Before Shepard could reply, Mordin was at her side with a syringe in hand, and Eve offered her arm so he could administer the medication.  
   
“Medication schedule adequate for now,” he muttered to himself. “Possibility of increased inflammatory response in unfamiliar environment. Could increase dose of—no! No, don’t want to risk building up tolerance. Hmm…”  
   
Eve looked down at him with patient affection, and Shepard took the opportunity to leave before Mordin started singing again.  
   
\--  
   
The earth shook. Shepard’s flashlight didn’t seem anywhere near adequate in the centuries-old darkness of the ruins. She felt her targeting software stall, not that she needed it right now.  
   
“That’s one hell of a tremor,” Vega said behind her. “You think the reapers hit something in the foundation?”  
   
“I don’t know,” Garrus replied. “Seems to be too frequent to be an earthquake.”  
   
“It’s not an earthquake,” Shepard whispered, fear slowly beginning to lock her systems up.  
   
“What was that?” Garrus asked, his voice distant. Shepard wheeled around and realized they’d gotten ahead of her, and she ran over to where they stood.  
   
Her flashlight illuminated an unmistakable shape painted in yellow on the cold stone wall.  
   
“Oh shit,” Vega said softly.  
   
“I don’t think Kalros is as much of a myth as we thought…” Garrus added.  
   
Shepard’s eyes began to shut down, blackness closing in on either side of her. She took off down the clearest path she could find, knocking a dead rachni to one side as she bolted up the stairs, desperate for the daylight she could see outside.  
   
Once she reached the top, she fell to her knees and shivered violently, trying to get her processors under control even as more of them fell into emergency shutdown. It wasn’t working.  
   
She should have brought Liara.  
   
“Whoa,” James walked over to her and knelt down so he could see her face. “You okay, Lola?”  
   
“Shepard,” Garrus followed him, noticeably out of breath, “what happened?”  
   
Shepard tried to speak, but it didn’t work, so she just stood up and kept walking towards the sunlight. The other two followed her on either side, and she could see they looked worried.  
   
“Commander, seriously,” James tried again. “Are you okay?”  
   
“Yeah,” she finally said, hoping they didn’t notice the skip in her vocals. “Yeah, I’m fine.”  
   
They didn’t ask again, which was good enough for her.  
   
On the other side of the clearing, several waves of reaper troops later, she finally caught sight of Wrex’s truck.  
   
“Shepard!” He called to her through the truck’s radio. “Get down here!”  
   
Shepard barely heard him; in the distance, she could hear the rumbling picking up behind him, and she wanted so badly to warn him, but her voice and her network comm both refused to work. She took a few, hesitant steps back, and when the rumbling noise grew louder, Mordin finally took notice.  
   
He shouted something that made Wrex hit the gas again, and they sped under the bridge just in time for an enormous mountain of moving scales to tear through the stones in front of them. As though ordinary thresher maws weren’t big enough.  
   
Shepard’s optics remained mercifully online. The light and heat of Arlakh blazing above them was just enough to remind her that she wasn’t on Akuze. She glanced behind her to see Garrus and James still standing there, waiting for orders.  
   
Later, when she was having a long, exhausted conversation with everyone in the Normandy’s lounge, she would realize nearly half of her processes either shut down or went to autopilot. She stopped recording audio and visual memory, her targeting software switched on and stayed on, and she didn’t say a word.  
   
The way Garrus described it, she took off like a rocket, and it was all they could do to keep up.  
   
The next thing Shepard remembered was looking down to the end of the arena, the battle-scarred temple built to honor her nightmares, and seeing the Reaper looming over them all. Its arms dug into the ground, cracking the stone and knocking the pillars of the arena aside.  
   
She blinked, then realized what Wrex and Eve had just suggested.  
   
“We’re going to _summon_ her?” she asked in disbelief.  
   
“It’s our best chance to take that reaper down,” Wrex chuckled. “If Tuchanka has a temper, Kalros is it. This is just as much her planet as ours.”  
   
“Think of it this way, commander,” Eve added, “that Reaper is destroying her home. She’s more than ready to strike; all we need to do is guide her.”  
   
Shepard’s processors were finally too overheated to maintain her panicked reverie, and as she looked up from the Reaper to the Shroud tower behind it, she felt a bizarre sort of calm settle over her.  
   
If _this_ idea worked, sorting the rest of the war out almost sounded easy.  
   
\--  
   
She was going to need a new set of armor when this was done, and she didn’t even want to think about what she looked like underneath it. She’d already lost one of the plates on her arm to the punishingly heavy claws of a brute. The first hammer fell (at long last), and Shepard was damn impressed that she could even feel it between the brutes and the crushing arms of the Reaper.  
   
“Shepard, let’s get that second hammer down!” Wrex shouted through her radio.  
   
“ _THERE’S A **REAPER** IN MY WAY, WREX!_ ”  
   
She flipped open her omni-blade and swung, lopping the head off of the brute preparing to charge her.  
   
“I know, you get all the fun!”  
   
Between jumping to the side to dodge the reaper’s descending arm and scrambling back to her feet, she somehow found time to roll her eyes at him. Still, the second hammer was getting closer with every step, until she finally released the switch and it came clanging down.  
   
The earth shook. _Tuchanka_ shook, and the ground beside her erupted as Kalros answered the hammers’ call. She latched onto the Reaper’s side, and it swung around hard, knocking them both against the Shroud tower hard enough to send broken glass showering to the ground. Kalros slid back underground for one gut-wrenching moment before rising up again, grabbing the Reaper from behind and coiling herself around and around its body. She pressed it into the ground, winding them deeper and deeper until they both sunk beneath the soil.  
   
Shepard barely believed her own eyes. All she could do was stare at the still, silent earth in front of her, dust settling into the cracks in her armor.  
   
“Thanks, Kalros,” she murmured, turning away and heading towards the lab near the base of the tower.  
   
“Shepard,” Mordin called to her, “excellent timing. Cure successfully synthesized. Eve somewhat traumatized, but recovering.”  
   
“Oh thank god,” Shepard replied, and whatever she meant to say next was cut off by a piece of the ceiling falling to the floor with a tremendous crash. She jumped; Mordin didn’t.  
   
“Need to hurry,” he continued, heading towards the elevator. “Tower collapsing. Need to disperse cure before mechanisms no longer functioning.”  
   
“Whoa, wait, Mordin,” Shepard ran after him. “You’re not going up there!”  
   
“Manual override necessary, Shepard,” Mordin said simply, turning to her with sadness lingering in his eyes. He’d already known this was coming. “STG access required to override countermeasure. Cure useless otherwise.”  
   
“That doesn’t mean you have to be up at the top,” Shepard persisted. “There’s got to be some kind of input system down here.”  
   
“Temperature control not possible to access remotely—” Mordin began.  
   
“The hell it’s not,” Shepard turned to the terminal beside her, taking a second to analyze the network on which it ran. It was strong, but unshielded beyond basic firewalls.  
   
Shepard sighed in relief, a nervous sort of smile twitching at the corners of her mouth. The Shroud was over a thousand years old; its designers hadn’t even known humans existed, let alone how to keep them from hacking into the system.  
   
She linked up to the building’s network and found the controls that opened up the Shroud’s vapor tank inlet. A panel near the elevator slid gently down to reveal a tiny air-locked chamber.  
   
“Here, put the cure into there. I’ll get the temperature controls running.”  
   
“Only chance to do this, Shepard,” Mordin warned her, but he opened the chamber and loaded the sure inside. It was liquid, more of it than she had expected, and it glimmered faintly behind the glass.  
   
“Come here,” she waved him over. “Give me your omni-tool. We can do this.”  
   
Mordin presented his arm, and Shepard took a second to link him up. She felt the heatsinks in her neck start to warm up; she really wasn’t designed for this. Traynor could probably pull it off in a matter of seconds, but they were going to have to make do.  
   
The menu for the temperature controls didn’t even show up until she’d activated Mordin’s STG access codes, whereupon they displayed a simplistic readout of the current conditions inside the dispersal inlet. Any ability to control the environment remained out of her reach. Probably required some kind of manual access up in the tower.  
   
“Cute,” she muttered, slipping in a few lines of code to make the computer forget she wasn’t on the top floor. A control panel covered in writing she couldn’t understand, even with her translator, replaced the readout. She lifted her hands from the keyboard and let Mordin take over.  
   
A loud crash came from outside. Still hooked up to the building’s system, she watched from an external camera as part of the outside wall burst open, flames pouring from the newly formed outlet. Emergency alarms were now sounding with such force, it took all of her processing power to keep them from interrupting Mordin’s work.  
   
There was a flash of pain as the contacts in her neck started to melt the muscle fibers underneath, and she deactivated her nerve receptors in that area. She’d never fully connected herself to a structure quite this big, and she didn’t think she’d like to try it again. It was all way too much data for her to handle at once, now that she wasn’t focused on the dispersal system. Was this what Joker felt like all the time?  
   
A faint humming noise reached her ears, and she turned to Mordin to find him singing softly to himself.  
   
“ _Hmm hm hmm hm, di di da, is a subset of biology…”_  
   
Shepard couldn’t help but laugh softly. Even in the tensest of situations, Mordin Solus was still Mordin Solus.  
   
“ _My xenoscience studies range from urban to agrarian…_ ”  
   
There was a soft whooshing sound from the glass pipe in the wall. In an instant, the cure began to drift softly through the sky, falling like gentle snow onto the scarred tuchankan soil.  
   
An explosion tore through the top floor in a burst of flame and glass. The cameras in the main upstairs lab malfunctioned and died, and Shepard absolutely did not think about how that could have been Mordin.  
   
“ _I am the very model of a scientist salarian._ ”  
   
Mordin stood upright, nodding to her with no small amount of pride.  
   
“Yes,” she agreed, “you really are.”  
   
\--  
   
Waiting for her new neck muscles to come out of the fabricator, Shepard glanced over at Mordin from her perch on the exam table. He was right back to it, tapping at the keys of his terminal and occasionally reaching over to adjust something in the incubation box.  
   
“How’s it feel knowing krogan are going to be singing battle songs about you?” she asked.  
   
“Battle songs immaterial. Prefer to focus on practical results of work. Need to see progress up close.”  
   
“Why didn’t you stay on Tuchanka, then?”  
   
“Have done all I can for Tuchanka. Needed elsewhere. Received immediate summons to the Citadel. Urgent need for research into new methods of caring for victims of Reaper attacks.”  
   
He inhaled deeply, his eyes squeezing shut.  
   
“Most unpleasant. Need to reduce damage as much as possible.”  
   
Shepard didn’t want to think too hard about what kind of damage the Reapers could do that modern medicine couldn’t treat. She heard the fabricator go whirring into the next stage of production, and then a small pinging noise came from Mordin’s terminal. He tapped a few keys, and then his hands slowed and his eyes grew wide.  
   
“Shepard,” he began, “received new message from Bakara. Think you should see this.”  
   
She was about to shift herself up off the table, but he tapped a few more keys and sent it to her over the ship’s network. It took her by surprise. His omni-tool probably remembered her from their connection at the Shroud, but her organic friends didn’t usually make much use of the network. Well, except Tali, but Shepard always felt like quarians and humans had more in common than people wanted to admit.  
   
[Mordin,  
   
My apologies for the quality. The only camera on hand was the one on the outside of the truck. I have devoted myself to traveling around Tuchanka and spreading the news of your cure. I cannot tell you how much it means to us that we no longer have to live in fear of our own bodies. You have given us hope, hope that we have not had in a thousand years.  
   
I thought you should see what it looks like.  
   
Even though it has not been long, I miss you already. Though your obligation to me was strictly professional, you have become one of the truest friends I have known in years.  
Take care. I hope to speak to you again soon.  
   
Bakara]  
   
Attached to the message was a video in a format so old, Shepard’s system barely remembered how to read it. It took a good minute for her to power up the long-unused program, and once she did, she jumped hard enough to feel it in her burnt shoulder.  
   
The audio, even when read internally and not played through any actual speaker, nearly knocked her over as soon as the file loaded. It was an all-consuming roar, as though the microphone had been caught in the wind. Maybe the file just didn’t read properly, or her version of the player software was outdated. She didn’t care that much, though, because the image was astounding.  
   
In the foreground, Bakara stood at the foot of the stairs that extended from the truck. She might have been talking, but Shepard couldn’t tell.  In front of her was a tumult of movement that carried as far as the camera could see: a crowd of krogan men and women that clearly numbered in the hundreds. They pressed up against each other, exchanging handshakes and hugs and jubilant whacks on the arm. She could see more than a few of them, male and female alike, clinging to each other and shaking with tears.  
   
She did a quick visual analysis to estimate how many people were there, and it struck her that what she was hearing wasn’t the byproduct of wind against a microphone.  
   
It was the sound of nearly two thousand krogan celebrating.  
   
Shepard closed the file and turned back to Mordin, pure joy glowing its way through her body. Mordin was back at his terminal, typing away. He might’ve been composing a reply to Bakara, or he may have simply returned to work.  
   
“I’d say that’s progress,” she said, unable to stop smiling.  
   
“Indeed,” Mordin turned to her with a glimmer in his eye. “Quite prefer it to battle songs.”


	6. Priority: Citadel

“Spirits,” Garrus looked around the thoroughly destroyed hallways of the C-Sec offices. “How the hell did this happen?”  
   
“If they took down the network first?” Shepard shrugged. “All they would’ve needed was enough manpower.”  
   
“From the looks of it, they had more than that,” Liara examined the body of a dead turian officer. “These people were shot in the back of the head. Cerberus must have had help on the inside.”  
   
“They sure do love their sleeper agents,” Shepard spat. “Thane, what’s your location?”  
   
“Getting closer.” Even through the radio, Shepard could tell his energy was flagging. “My path is clear, but running is difficult.”  
   
Shepard hoped Liara and Garrus didn’t see her wince.  
   
“We’re almost at the executor’s office,” she replied. “We’ll see you soon.”  
   
They reached an open courtyard with rows of tables still neatly in place. The area was empty, and eerily quiet compared to the mess they’d walked through. They made their way up the stairs to the office, and Shepard could swear there was a soft rustling noise behind them. She spun back around, scanning the perimeter from the ceiling down, but there was nothing.  
   
“Watch my six,” she muttered to Garrus, opening the office door with her gun drawn.  
   
The bodies of the executor and two armed guards greeted her, and her eyes narrowed. They hadn’t been killed by the onslaught of Cerberus troops that had torn through the rest of the Citadel; aside from the dead bodies, the office was pristine.  
   
“Bailey,” she called him over her radio, “the executor and two bodyguards are dead. No sign of Valern.”  
   
“Don’t count him out until you find a body,” Bailey replied. “I’m on my way to the rest of the Council.”  
   
Out in the courtyard, a chair moved on its own. Liara waved her over, and through the window she saw the Salarian councilor emerge from underneath a tactical cloak. On a beam above, there was a figure just out of view of the window, and it was moving towards him.  
   
Shepard blew the window out and jumped down, landing none too gently behind the councilor. The man standing across from them had his hand stretched out, and a strange orange-blue glow radiated from his palm. He was crouched just enough to be dangerous, balanced like he was ready to strike.  
   
His body was covered in black armor that gleamed like the plates of a scorpion. It was fastened over his eyes and on either side of his face, almost like the tactical interfaces asari and salarians sometimes wore. Her sensors were picking up some kind of heat signature, but she couldn’t identify it. Probably had something to do with the energy projecting from his hand.  
   
All she could see of his eyes were two slits of light. Where his knees bent, the armor plating shifted so Shepard could just barely see the connecting circuits underneath. It was far too compact to account for his musculature; in all likelihood, the armor was built into his body instead of simply being worn over it.  
   
She glanced back up and noticed the scar tissue that had formed where one side of his eyepiece attached to his skin. With a sickening lurch, she realized she wasn’t seeing a heat signature, but a _body temperature_. Underneath the shiny exoskeleton, he was organic.  
   
He didn’t look organic. He barely looked human.  
   
Garrus and Liara came up behind her, and Shepard inched her way forward, not daring to make any sudden moves.  
   
“Three against one, pal,” she said. “It’s over.”  
   
He just smirked at her.  
   
“No,” he replied, “now it’s fun.”  
   
Behind him, the barrel of a pistol pressed against his head. Shepard glanced up to see Thane knock him to the ground, and her first thought should not have been how his heat signature looked cooler in his hands and feet, probably from diminished blood flow. God help her, she couldn’t turn off her medic software if she wanted to.  
   
If Thane was hindered by his condition, however, he didn’t show it. The Salarian councilor slipped behind Shepard and Garrus while the two men fought, and even with all of the assassin’s skill (and unnatural flexibility), Thane once again knocked him down, sending the gun flying from his hand.  
   
Instead of being deterred, however, the man just stood up, reached behind him, and pulled out a knife. Its blade extended three times its length in an ominous flash, and he crouched low. Thane stood ready to meet him, his gun poised to knock the blade back.  
   
The assassin dug his heels in and prepared to charge, and the rustling noise Shepard had heard earlier returned, twice as loud. There was the sound of footsteps running towards them, and then an unholy, furious shriek as Eva vaulted over the tables and launched herself at him.  
   
She landed a kick squarely in the middle of his chest, but only because he’d jumped out of the way before she could hit his neck. Thane ducked around her and aimed his gun at the assassin, moving to the side and preparing to flank him. The assassin, now running out of room, rolled out from under Eva’s reach and came up, striking Thane in the side with the handle of his sword.  
   
An ugly cracking noise reached Shepard’s ears, and Thane crumpled to the ground, gasping for breath. The assassin dodged Eva’s next punch and slipped back to behind the plant-covered barrier, pausing for a moment to regard her as she regained her balance.  
   
“So, you finally grew an imagination,” he sneered at her.  
   
Eva’s only response was to bound forward and grab him – or at least try to. He turned to the side and brought his blade up, and even as Eva tried to dodge him, it sliced down the side of her neck and deep into her chest. She fell, hitting the floor with a wet thud.  
   
He took off running, and Shepard followed, firing as fast as her gun would allow. To her shock, Thane followed her, leaning on his injured side against the door and firing until he ran out of thermal clips. The assassin hopped onto the hood of a hovercar and raised his hand again, and this time the light expanded into a shield. Their bullets bounced off, and the car sped away. Shepard swore under her breath before turning back to Thane.  
   
“Are you alright?”  
   
“I will be,” he nodded, clutching at his side. “Get to the Council.”  
   
Shepard looked back at Eva, who stood leaning against the tables, her body already starting to repair itself. Shepard hadn’t expected her to be standing again so soon, but it made sense. She survived being hit by a shuttle, and then extensive burns and six bullets after that.  
   
The spark of anger in her eyes had evolved into a molten rage, one that she carried in the clench of her jaw and the tight grip she kept on her pistol. There was an ugly stripe of red where the sword had cut through her armor, and her footing was unsteady. A smeared dark splash on the ground betrayed the fact that she had lost a lot of blood; the assassin had most likely been aiming for an artery, and he’d hit home.  
   
Shepard was about ready to finish the job herself. Thane could have easily handled him on his own, and all Eva had done was drive him out of reach. Not to mention she’d most likely been following them without telling her, in direct violation of Shepard’s instructions to stay and help Edi and Traynor get the Citadel network running. Shepard wasn’t built to be a soldier, but she had no room on her ship for insubordination.  
   
“When we get back, you have a hell of a lot of explaining to do,” Shepard said, her words dripping with anger, “but right now we’ve got bigger problems. Get him to Huerta Memorial and then report to med bay.”  
   
Eva almost looked like she was going to argue with her, but thankfully for both of them, she thought better of it. She turned back to Thane and helped him up, bringing him surprisingly gently to his feet. Shepard whipped back around and headed for the police car outside, hoping to god she had enough time to get to the Council.  
   
\--  
   
Huerta Memorial was a fucking mess. An apparent shortage of rooms left patients lying on stretchers out in the hallway, or even on the floor. Doctors and nurses and people Shepard couldn’t identify flew out of one room and into another. She couldn’t help but notice most of them were human, and a lot of them had exposed emergency solar cells on the backs of their necks. The Citadel was finally feeling the war.  
   
She made her way slowly to the back of the hospital, worried what she would find there. She hadn’t expected him to need treatment serious enough to warrant an inpatient room. The doors weren’t labeled, and so she lingered, looking for a physician or a nurse or _someone_ who knew what was going on. Eventually, a human man approached her, exhaustion heavy in his eyes.  
   
“Can I help you, commander?” He asked. Shepard almost brushed him off, but then realized she’d been looking for the uniform emblems physicians wore during the plague years. No wonder she’d been so lost.  
   
“I’m looking for a drell named Thane Krios,” she replied.  
   
“Well, we have a drell, but not under that name.”  
   
“Trauma to the left upper abdomen,” she added, falling back into the specifics of medical reporting. “Possible rib fracture? He’s a regular patient here, just started physical therapy.”  
   
“Yes, that’s him,” the doctor nodded. “He came here with two broken ribs, and in the process of getting here, he nearly went into hypoxic shock.”  
   
“ _What_?” Shepard backed up and prepared to run to Thane’s room…before remembering she didn’t know which room it was.  
   
“He’s in the final stages of Kepral’s Syndrome,” the doctor explained, as though she hadn’t known that for more than a year. “We thought his lack of oxygen might be due to internal bleeding, but he’s not showing any signs of it. His son is here, offering to donate blood if we needed to transfuse, but there’s not much more we can do. His body just doesn’t process oxygen very well.”  
   
Shepard actually bit her tongue to keep from shouting at him. After all they’d been through, after all he’d done, dying from two broken ribs was an insult.  
   
“Can I see him?” she asked.  
   
“Go right ahead. He actually asked about you when word got out that the Council had been saved.”  
   
He motioned towards the room behind her, and Shepard ran in before he was even finished speaking. Thane lay still, his chest rising and falling slowly, the thin blue glow of an oxygen concentrator resting over his face.  
   
Shepard had never seen one of those in person, aside from the opaque versions asari used for low-atmosphere spaceflight. It looked infinitely more dignified than the plastic masks the organic humans had worn back on earth. He still looked like himself. The fact that he was still wearing it came as a relief; he hadn’t given up just yet.  
   
“Shepard,” he smiled warmly at her. “I hoped to see you again.”  
   
“Me too,” she walked up to his bedside and noted the brace on his side, most likely keeping pressure off of the broken ribs so they could heal.  
   
At the foot of his bed, Kolyat was seated on a boxy metal chair. He stood to greet her, and she couldn’t help but notice how much calmer he looked. Granted, the last time she had seen him, she’d stopped him halfway through an attempted murder, but still. The change was easy to see.  
   
“Commander Shepard,” he shook her hand. “You may not remember me. I’m Kolyat Krios, Thane’s son.”  
   
Of course she remembered him, but she didn’t say that. The way he said it had an air of significance, like he was reintroducing himself in hopes of leaving the man he used to be behind. She nodded, choosing to let him clean his slate.  
   
“How are you feeling, Thane?” she asked.  
   
“Physically, the pain has subsided somewhat. Unless—” He broke into a coughing fit, grimacing and clutching his side. “Unless that happens.”  
   
He lay back down, and just because she couldn’t help herself, Shepard raised the head of his bed another couple of inches, so it would be easier to breathe.  
   
“Thank you,” he gave her a knowing look. “Rest assured, I am in good hands.”  
   
She grinned a little sheepishly. Her next question was going to be how the doctors were treating him, but of course he knew.  
   
“I wasn’t aware Edi had a sister,” Thane remarked. “At least, that’s who I assume she was. Their temperaments couldn’t be more different.”  
   
“No, they really couldn’t,” Shepard shook her head, not really in the mood to explain who Eva was at the moment. “I’m glad she got you here in one piece.”  
   
 _I’m glad she got you here at all_ , she didn’t say.  
   
“Considering how much blood she lost, she was remarkably strong,” Thane mused. “By the time we reached the hospital, I was beginning to lose consciousness. She all but carried me into the emergency department.”  
   
“I hope that didn’t hurt too much.”  
   
“Not nearly as much as it could have. It was strange: she didn’t say a word to me the entire time. If she hadn’t made such a loud entrance, I would have assumed she couldn’t speak. To my surprise, she was still here when I awoke, but once my eyes were open, she turned to leave.”  
   
“That…doesn’t sound like her,” Shepard’s brows furrowed. “Why would she stay?”  
   
“I asked her the same question,” Thane began to cough again, and their conversation was put on hold until he caught his breath. “All she said was she ‘refused to give him the satisfaction of killing me’.”  
   
“I see,” Shepard glanced toward the door. She was going to have to find Eva and sort this out.  
   
“I assume she meant that assassin. She made it sound as though she were more interested in besting him than in ensuring my safety. Considering the way she fought, that doesn’t come as a surprise.”  
   
“I’ve never seen her do that,” Shepard shook her head. “I mean, I’ve seen her lunge at somebody like that. I just…she’s never _screamed_ at them while she did it. She’s definitely never gone behind my back and ignored orders, before.”  
   
“She is profoundly disconnected,” Thane lamented. “The desire for vengeance clouds her eyes.”  
   
He looked up at her, reaching a hand out to rest against her arm.  
   
“I know that feeling far too well, Shepard. It is likely that she did not disobey you out of spite.”  
   
“I sure hope not,” she sighed.  
   
“When a person is that far removed from their own body, it is hard for them to hear any voice but the whispers in their mind. It is a tremendous blessing not to feel that way, now.” Thane lay his arm back down. “I cannot describe how fortunate I am, Shepard. I feel whole. I feel _complete_.”  
   
He didn’t speak again, and his eyes closed gently. Shepard watched his chest rise and fall for a good half a minute, triple-checking that the steady, stable vital signs she was reading were accurate. When she was finally sure that he was alive, if exhausted, she said her goodbyes to Kolyat and went back out into the hall.  
   
She headed back through the lab with helpless anger crawling through her. It stayed in her central circuits, and flashpoints of heat started to burn across her face. She prayed her skin wasn’t starting to split, again, but she didn’t feel any scarring on her cheeks.  
   
This wasn’t supposed to _happen_ anymore; the plague had ended years and years ago. Even though Thane had survived the fight with the Cerberus assassin, he was still dying, and there wasn’t a goddamn thing she could do to help.  
   
She did a double take as she spotted Mordin in the window of the lab, tapping away at one of the terminals inside. Figuring it couldn’t hurt to say hello (and see how the other doctors were handling his incessant chatter), she doubled back and headed inside.  
   
“Shepard,” Mordin nodded. “Heard news of attack on Council. Very unfortunate that indoctrinated member was also human member. Already difficult to mitigate anti-human bias in large portion of Citadel population.”  
   
“Yeah, it’s not winning us any fans,” Shepard sighed. “There’s also the fact that two humans saved the other councilors, but nobody seems to remember that. What are you working on?”  
   
“Have become rather associated with genetic therapy and modification due to genophage cure,” Mordin replied. “Not bothered by this, of course. Many different applications. Some Reaper attacks incorporating synthetic virus that alters genetic structure, promotes transformation into reaper ground troops. Excellent progress on countermeasure so far, still room for improvement.”  
   
“Wow,” Shepard whispered. “That’s…amazing.”  
   
“Of course, not much application for victims transformed through direct contact,” Mordin shuddered. “Rather nasty business. Best defense against that tactic still a loaded gun. Problematic for civilian population.”  
   
He peered into a microscope and frowned.  
   
“No, no, _no!_ Respiratory function still top priority. Reaper virus equipped with failsafe to ensure death if conversion not possible. Gene sequencing not accounting for necessity of cell vitality. Perhaps treatment synthesized from donor tissue, rather than patient’s own?”  
   
Somewhere in the back of Shepard’s drives, an idea snapped into being. Maybe it was because she’d just watched him do the impossible on tuchanka. Maybe it was because she knew she could trust him. Maybe it was just because he was Mordin. Either way, it was a long shot, but it was worth a try.  
   
“Mordin,” she began, “how much do you know about drell?”  
   
\--  
   
Edi’s medication was now a full hour overdue, and she hadn’t even opened up the pill bottle. Instead, she was serving as an impromptu assistant to Dr. Chakwas, passing her vials of a medication designed to help regenerate red blood cells.  
   
The bag of IV fluid she’d hung was nearly empty, and Dr. Chakwas nodded towards the med cabinet, so she replaced it. It flowed rapidly into a port implanted in Eva’s arm, and Dr. Chakwas administered the other drug just behind her knee.  
   
Eva actually flinched, but the doctor had her other hand holding her leg still. Considering what she’d been through, it seemed odd that she’d react to something so minor. Then again, she’d probably never received that medicine, before. It needed to be given as close to a major bone marrow source as possible, which made the likelihood of hitting a nerve rather high.  
   
Dr. Chakwas released her, and Eva immediately tried to push herself up onto her elbows. Edi held up a hand in warning.  
   
“You don’t want to sit up yet,” she cautioned. “You’re going to feel very dizzy in a minute.”  
   
“How do you know?” Eva winged an eyebrow at her.  
   
Edi gave her a distinctly unimpressed look.  
   
“Because that was _my_ medication she just gave you.” She finally pulled her prescription bottle out of the top cabinet and shook a couple of tablets out into her hand. “Why do you think we have medicine onboard that’s designed for organic humans? Malformed bones have malformed bone marrow, so I run the risk of becoming anemic. I have to take a vial of that once a month.”  
   
She walked over to Dr. Chakwas’s desk and recovered the now room-temperature glass of water she’d left there earlier. She took a sip before taking the medicine; it was far too bitter to sit unshielded on her tongue.  
   
Eva slid back down onto the exam table and put a hand over her eyes, clearly feeling the side effects of the medicine. Her fluids were done, and Dr. Chakwas unhooked the tubing from her arm. All that was left was to wait for the medicine to finish its work.  
   
The one drug they hadn’t needed was medi-gel. Besides the damage to her armor, there had been no sign of her injury; her body had repaired itself so efficiently, it hadn’t even left a scar.  
   
While she and Samantha had been working on repairing the Citadel network, Edi hadn’t noticed Eva’s absence until Shepard and her squad had reached the executor’s office. After searching the entire ship, she’d patched herself into Shepard’s visual feed in the hopes of finding out where she’d gone. She was about to warn Shepard that Eva had disappeared when she watched her ambush the Cerberus assassin.  
   
She’d barely recognized him at first, as covered in armor and tech as he was. Once she saw how he fought, though, there was no mistaking him. He never stopped moving, spinning around his opponent and striking quickly where it would hurt the most. He hadn’t been as quick when she’d watched him sparring with Eva, but he’d been just as slippery.  
   
As awful as it was, Edi had been afraid that Eva had been biding her time on the Normandy, waiting for the Citadel attack so she could rejoin Cerberus. If that had been true, however, she could have done much more damage from inside the ship. As it was, despite the fact that she’d been explicitly insubordinate and deliberately deceptive, Eva had at least proven that her intentions of revenge against Cerberus were honest.  
   
“Who was he?” she asked, leaning on the wall by Eva’s bed.  
   
Eva lowered her hand from her eyes and glared up at her, clenching her fist around a gun that wasn’t there.  
   
“His name is Kai Leng,” she hissed, “and he is a monster.”  
   
\--  
   
Leaving the docking bay with her temper mostly cooled down, Shepard was only a little surprised to see Kaidan waiting for her just outside the Normandy’s door.   
   
“Looks like you dragged my ass out of the fire again, commander,” he said, leaning against the wall with a slow smile, as though they hadn’t nearly killed each other earlier that day.  
   
“Don’t give me all the credit,” she shrugged. “If you hadn’t been there, that could have gone a lot worse.”  
   
“Still could’ve gone better.”  
   
“Tell me about it,” she sighed softly, “but I get the feeling you’re not just here to say goodbye.”  
   
“Hackett’s already offered me a position,” Kaidan admitted, glancing out the docking bay window, “but I’d rather be back on the Normandy with you.”  
   
“You’re more than welcome,” she smiled, but it was strained, “but there’s something you should know before you commit to that decision.”  
   
“Is it about the organic woman who nearly killed me back on Mars?” He asked, his expression less than amused. “Because I already know she’s on your team now.”  
   
Shepard’s eyes went wide.  
   
“Yeah, actually. When did you hear about that?”  
   
“Grissom Academy,” he said. “You didn’t think I wouldn’t keep tabs on the Normandy, did you?”  
   
“Somehow, I thought you’d be busy,” Shepard couldn’t help but laugh. “So that means you knew about Eva before I saw you at Huerta Memorial, doesn’t it?”  
   
“Yeah,” he nodded, “but I wanted you to bring it up first.”  
   
“I understand,” she nodded. “Why she’s with us is a bit of a long story, but are you sure you’re alright working with her on the team?”  
   
“I trust you, Shepard.” His tone was even, and his eyes were free of even a shred of doubt. “I’m sure it’s an interesting story, but right now we’ve got a war to fight.”  
   
“Can’t blame you there. Might end up not mattering, anyway. She’s got some serious explaining to do if she wants to stay on my ship,” she extended her hand. “Good to have you back onboard, Kaidan.”  
   
“Good to be back, ma’am,” he shook it firmly, and they headed into the CIC.  
   
Shepard got a call from Mordin once the door shut behind them, which was nice, if unanticipated. She hadn’t expected him to get back to her quite so quickly, but Mordin wasn’t known for taking his time with things.  
   
“Have spoken with patient, Shepard. Good to see Thane again, by the way. Fighting spirit mostly unchanged since defeat of Collectors.”  
   
“I’m still awake, Dr. Solus.” Thane’s voice came from somewhere in the background. Mordin must be in his room. And have her on speaker. “I’m more than willing to help further your research, but I’m not sure such a long-term condition is our most pressing concern, right now.”  
   
“Significant portion of drell population affected by Kepral’s Syndrome,” Mordin countered. “Leading cause of non-combat death amongst drell forces on Kahje. Effective treatment, perhaps even cure, best hope for drell and hanar to survive.”  
   
“I see,” Thane still sounded doubtful, but he let the matter rest.  
   
“Will notify you of any changes, Shepard,” Mordin continued. “Must get to work in meantime.”  
   
With that, he disconnected, and the galaxy seemed just a little brighter.  
   
Her mood darkened again when she entered med bay and saw Eva resting on the exam table. Beside her, Edi was leaning against the wall with her eyes closed and a focused look on her face. Shepard had seen it enough times to know she was either running something through her cybernetics, or she’d just taken her medication and was dealing with the nausea.  
   
She passed by her for now and stood on the other side of Eva’s table, noting with some frustration that she didn’t remove her hand from where it covered her eyes.  
   
“What the hell was that?”  
   
“Kai Leng,” Eva began, not moving her hand away. “He was created from different genetic material than Edi and I, and he is by far the most vicious weapon Cerberus has in its arsenal.”  
   
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Shepard said, her voice as heavy as lead.  
   
“Kai Leng is only one year younger than I am,” Eva continued, “but he underwent much more extensive modification. We were frequently placed in combat training together and often pitted against each other. His upgrades made him move faster, strike harder, and dodge attacks before they ever reached him. His temperament, however, is all his own.”  
   
“So, you knew him?”  
   
“I spent nearly every day fighting him. My performance in simulated combat drills was flawless, but I could not win against him. He was modified in ways I could not have survived, and he taught himself to fight dirty. The reason he cut across a major blood vessel, rather than attempting to stab through my chest, is because he knows I can recover from a stab wound, but blood loss remains one of my biggest weak points.”  
   
Eva’s story sounded true enough, but it still didn’t explain why she’d go behind their backs just to get to him. There was something more to this story, and she didn’t want to keep digging like this to find out what it was.  
   
“Seven to one,” Edi said, completely derailing Shepard’s train of thought.  
   
“What?” she asked.  
   
“I’ve been replaying my visual memory of the sparring matches I watched between Eva and Kai Leng,” Edi said, her voice slowed by an unpleasant realization. “The number of matches won by Kai Leng outnumbers those won by Eva seven to one.”  
   
“That was before they removed the door on your side,” Eva lowered her hand, but her eyes were still closed. “On the whole, it’s closer to nine.”  
   
“So what,” Shepard said exasperatedly, “you’re telling me you did that to settle some kind of score?”  
   
Eva did open her eyes this time, and she tried to haul herself upright, eventually ending up leaning on one arm. Her other hand was shaking. Shepard wasn’t impressed.  
   
“If this were about mere rivalry, I would still be fighting for Cerberus. When Kai Leng’s augmentations let him survive without sleep, he would crawl through the ventilation shafts into my room at night. I would fight through fatigue during the day because I’d been awoken at night by a blade at my throat. He’d vanish as soon as I opened my eyes, but if I dared to fall asleep again, he would come back.”  
   
“And the staff let him do that?” Edi asked. Eva slid back and turned to her, looking distinctly unimpressed.  
   
“He got very good at hacking the security system. He’d ambush me during target practice, tactical drills, even during dinner. He’d say if I really knew how to fight, I’d be able to handle the surprise. After my neural implants were put in, he would wake me up with electric charges. I started sleeping with a gun, but he always ran off before I could hit him.”  
   
“Why the hell would anyone do that?” Shepard asked.  
   
“He enjoys it,” Eva said flatly. “Nothing makes him happier than winning, but he hates a fair fight. If he thinks he’s lost the upper hand, he’ll scurry away like a rat.”  
   
“Or maybe you just scared him off,” Shepard countered.  
   
“He’s not afraid of me,” Eva actually scoffed.  
   
Shepard took a deep breath and looked her straight in the eye.  
   
“Alright, look. I _fucking refuse_ to let you cost us this war over some goddamned vendetta. You want to keep your place in my crew? You want me to believe I didn’t make a mistake when I let you out of drive storage alive? You want to convince me you can take orders without electrodes in your spine?”  
   
Eva didn’t respond, but her hand wasn’t shaking anymore. Shepard leaned in close, her voice dropping to a cold hiss.  
   
“ _Start acting like it._ Pull another stunt like that, and I’ll finish what Kai Leng started.”  
   
She stood up and stormed back out of med bay, not even bothering to wait for a reply.  
   
\--  
   
Taking a quick moment to snap photographs of the refugees wasn’t exactly the most productive thing Shepard could be doing. She wasn’t even sure she was doing it correctly, but the journalist in the front hall seemed to like what she was sending. She appreciated the opportunity all the same, because it gave her a chance to remind herself why she was doing all this. Mordin had a point, after all.   
   
The memorial wall was plastered to the ceiling with pictures and pieces of writing, and it looked so much more personal than the sterile list of names at the back of the crew deck. She had to keep herself from looking at the impromptu medical setup in the cargo bay for too long, since she could identify at least seven safety precautions that just couldn’t be followed. Finding Vega getting cleaned out at poker was certainly uplifting, though.  
   
Near the back of the holding area, behind medi-gel stations and communication terminals, there were a couple of figures leaning against the wall. It didn’t look like something the journalist would want for his feature, so she passed right by them once she caught sight of what looked like one of those unauthorized Shepard VIs.  
   
“Aw, Shep. You’re not even going to say hello?”  
   
“Kasumi?” she spun back around and walked over to her. “I thought you were gonna meet up with the Crucible team.”  
   
“I had some unfinished business.” Kasumi smiled at her from under her hood. She nudged the man beside her with her elbow. “Don’t be shy, Keiji. Say hello!”  
   
“Ah, Keiji Okuda,” he shook her hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you face to face, commander.”  
   
“Likewise,” Shepard grinned, her whole system flushed with honest joy. Even when Kasumi had told her they’d recovered Keiji’s greybox intact, she hadn’t ever expected to meet him. “I take it you missed the excitement with the Hanar.”  
   
“Unfortunately,” Kasumi chuckled, “He just got here from Illium.”  
   
“That’s great,” Shepard grinned broadly at Keiji. “I take it you’ll be working with Kasumi on the—”  
   
Kasumi held up a hand before Shepard could continue.  
   
“Don’t ruin it,” she stage-whispered. “I want this to be a surprise.”  
   
“Have fun with that,” Shepard rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t keep from smiling as she headed back toward the elevator. If Kasumi was in the mood for games, it was because she was sure they’d win.  
   
“See you around Shepard,” Kasumi called after her.  
   
\--  
   
 _“Breaking now, a remarkable new treatment for Kepral’s Syndrome, the disease that’s killing almost as many drell as the Reapers. Will this be the turning point for a species on the brink of endangerment, or is it effort better spent on the war? We’ll show you both sides right here – in the Battlespace.”_  
   
 Edi turned off her link to the cameras downstairs – Allers spent twenty minutes editing for every ten she spent shooting, and she was starting to get a headache. Her food finally looked cool enough to eat, but she decided to give it a minute.  
   
“It’s a bit late to be asking this,” she began, “but why do we have a news broadcast studio set up in one of the cargo holds?”  
   
“Diana pitched the idea, and Shepard liked it.” Samantha shrugged. “I don’t blame her. We’ve got more information streams coming in than any other ship out there, and the footage she gets from the ship’s external cameras has to be amazing.”  
   
“Didn’t Shepard make friends with Emily Wong, at some point?” Edi took a cautious bite of her dinner. It was apparently a levo version of a turian dish, and it was a welcome change from the asari cuisine she’d been eating previously. “I swear Jeff mentioned something about that.”  
   
“She did, yeah,” Samantha nodded. “God, her footage from the invasion is gonna end up in history classes, someday. Girl’s got the best eyes money can buy.”  
   
The med bay door opened, and Eva stepped slowly past them towards the kitchen. She didn’t look at them, instead removing something freeze-dried from a cabinet and heading straight towards the elevator.  
   
“There’s room here,” Samantha said, then immediately flinched back as though she wished she hadn’t.  
   
Eva actually stopped, looked straight at them, and then said nothing for a long moment.  
   
“That…isn’t necessary,” she shook her head and continued out of the mess hall.  
   
Once she was past the table, Samantha’s eyes squeezed shut with a grimace. Edi couldn’t tell in the low light of the night cycle, but it looked like her cheeks were flushed.   
   
Eva’s footsteps stopped, but before they heard the elevator doors open, she spoke again.  
   
“…but thank you.”  
   
Samantha whipped around in her chair, but by the time she stood, the elevator door had opened and shut. She looked back at Edi, mouth agape, and gestured back toward the elevator.  
   
“I…that…you heard that too, right?”  
   
Edi nodded, unable to come up with a reply.  
   
“Whatever Shepard said to her must have worked,” Samantha sat back down, leaning back against her chair.  
   
“I guess so,” Edi gave her a hesitant, hopeful smile.


	7. Priority: Geth Dreadnought

Tali opened her omni-tool for the fifth time in the last hour. A message she’d had sitting open and unsent looked back at her, and she shook her head and closed it, again for the fifth time in an hour.  
   
It was true that the Alliance would most likely send the Normandy to rendezvous with the Migrant Fleet; its stealth system made it the only ship the geth wouldn’t immediately turn on. Still, Admiral Xen had given her this _look_ while she’d described the fleet’s upgraded communication systems, and she just knew the second she sent a message outside of quarian space, it would alert her.  
   
It wasn’t a secret that Xen didn’t trust her. She’d said absolutely nothing when Tali was named admiral, and there had been at least one meeting before the start of this ridiculous war that they’d deliberately forgotten to invite her to. She’d still shown up, of course – whether they liked it or not, she was an admiral, now.  
   
She glanced at the combat data being streamed into her terminal and cringed. They were in far over their heads, and they all knew it. It hadn’t been that way, initially – vicious as they were, Xen’s new innovations had made fighting the geth a hundred times easier than the Morning War. (Or at least, that’s what the numbers said. It wasn’t like any of them had been alive back then.)  
   
It was the recent developments that were giving them such trouble. Even though the rest of the admirals had assumed the Reapers had intervened and taken control of them by force, Tali wasn’t so sure.  
   
She’d had a lot of time to think about the geth since they’d come back from the Omega-4 relay. While they had still been repairing the Normandy, she’d worked surprisingly often with Legion. Legion remembered the Morning War very differently from the stories Tali had been told growing up, and considering he had been there when it happened, she was inclined to believe him. In the fleet, it was easy to see the geth as a sort of faceless enemy – literally – and therefore she seemed to be one of the few who had objected to the war.  
   
A report of another lost liveship popped up on her terminal screen, and she sighed sadly. She’d begged the other admirals to at least try to negotiate with the geth before they attacked. Shepard’s words from the drive storage room had echoed in her ears, _at some point, you’re both going to have to stop fighting this war_. They hadn’t listened. Even Raan had dismissed the idea.  
   
(“I know that you have more experience working with synthetics than the rest of us,” she’d said, “but you have to understand that the geth are not like humans.”)  
   
A note from Koris reached her omni-tool, and she opened it to see that the Alliance had answered their call. The Normandy was on its way. She smiled for the first time in days.  
   
Now that she had an excuse, she brought that unsent message back up and sent it out. When they went after the Collectors, her omni-tool had automatically linked up to the Normandy’s network. The access protocol had remembered her from her time on the SR-1 despite it being a whole new ship. She’d suspected Joker had something to do with that. Hopefully he still remembered her.  
   
Hopefully Garrus still had all of his network messages routed through his visor.  
   
>I know you’re on the way here, but I thought I’d warn you ahead of time. When Shepard finds out why the admirals reached out to the Alliance, she’s going to explode.  
   
She barely had to wait a full minute before her omni-tool blinked with his response.  
   
>>I’ll make sure to find cover. See you soon.  
   
\--  
   
“You went to war with the geth?” Shepard asked incredulously, regarding the admirals from the other side of the War Room console. She looked wide-eyed at Tali, who had remained quiet thus far, and remained quiet now. Even in the dim lighting, Shepard could tell she wasn’t happy.  
   
“The heavy fleet was successfully driving them back until recently,” Raan replied, bringing up a diagram of the geth fleet surrounding Rannoch. “A reaper signal was transmitted to the entire geth fleet, and ever since, they have been decimating our forces.”  
   
“You went to war with the geth.”  
   
“Precisely,” Admiral Xen nodded, sounding pleased with herself. Actually, Shepard couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t sounded pleased with herself. Must be nice. “We recently reached a technological breakthrough that allowed us the upper hand. With the Reapers swarming the rest of the galaxy, it was our best chance at victory.”  
   
“The Reapers are tearing the galaxy apart,” Shepard leaned even lower against the side of the console, “so you _went to war with the geth._ ”  
   
“I don’t see what’s so hard to understand about this, commander,” Gerrel began.  
   
“Yeah, I bet you don’t,” Shepard mumbled, her teeth clenched so he shouldn’t have been able to hear her. “Okay, before we talk about disabling the reaper signal: did it even cross your mind that maybe you didn’t need to start a war to get your homeworld back?”  
   
“What exactly does that mean?” Gerrel asked, his tone already more accusatory than Shepard would have liked. “Do you think we could have just _asked_ them if we could come back to Rannoch?”  
   
“You could’ve at least tried,” Shepard stood upright again and crossed her arms.  
   
“The suggestion was put forth to attempt negotiations with the geth,” Raan began hesitantly.  
   
“Yes, our newest admiral seemed to think that this conflict could be solved with mere words,” Xen looked disdainfully at Tali. Shepard glared daggers at her.  
   
“Alright, look,” she said flatly, “I’ll get that Reaper signal turned off on the dreadnought, but once it’s down, you need to retreat immediately. The geth have you outnumbered so badly, they’re gonna take you out even without the reapers’ help.”  
   
“Unless the Alliance offers their support,” Koris began, his tone just on this side of pleading. “In exchange for which we would devote our entire fleet to fighting the Reapers.”  
   
Shepard took a deep breath, and maybe she blew it out a little harder than necessary so they’d all hear the distinctly synthetic sound of her respiratory valves changing direction. She knew from Tali’s hearing that Koris didn’t want to fight the geth any more than she did, but he also wanted to protect his people. She couldn’t fault him for that.  
   
“I don’t want to see your fleet fall,” she said reassuringly. “Let’s get to that dreadnought.”  
   
\--  
   
On the way to the Far Rim, Tali got to say hello to the rest of the crew. It was good to have Liara onboard, and not just because she remembered how badly Shepard had missed her last time. She’d been especially pleased to see that Adams had come back, as well as Ken and Gabby. Maybe they’d be able to start up their Skyllian Five games, again.  
   
On her way out of engineering, she ran into a woman who was making her way up the stairs from Jack’s old hideout, and it stopped her in her tracks. She stared at her in confusion for a moment, unsure of what to think.  
   
She’d kept the vital sign tracking software Shepard had given her on Illium, and she remembered it used to activate on its own whenever she saw Edi. Considering it had been built to find organic humans in disaster sites, she figured it was just part of the design.  Now, though…wasn’t Edi the only organic human still alive? This woman looked a lot like her, but there was no way…  
   
The woman looked up from the stack of datapads in her arm and saw her staring. After a moment, she gave a sigh of resignation.  
   
“I’m not Edi.”  
   
“I can see that,” Tali shook herself, then decided she might as well try to salvage this first impression. She extended her hand. “Tali’Zorah vas Normandy. Good to meet you.”  
   
The woman regarded Tali’s outstretched hand with what looked like surprise. Hesitantly, she stepped forward and shook it.  
   
“Eva Coré,” she replied. “Likewise.”  
   
They walked out into the hall and entered the elevator, and when Tali hit the button to take them down to the armory, Eva didn’t say anything. She sorted through the datapads she was carrying, an orange visor identical to Edi’s appearing over her eyes. Tali had the feeling there was a long story behind why she was here, but she figured she could ask Shepard later.  
   
“I’ve heard a great deal about your contribution to the Normandy’s past missions,” Eva said out of nowhere. “I look forward to working with you.”  
   
“I, uh…” Tali blinked a few times and eventually decided to take that as a compliment. “Thanks.”  
   
The elevator doors opened, and Tali took three steps out only to trip on something that gave a metallic _clang_ against her suit. Eva grabbed hold of her arm and kept her from falling over, and she looked down to see…a FENRIS mech? Its lights were blue, though, and it wasn’t attacking them. Must have been equipped with a different kind of software. It padded right past them, apparently unaffected by the impact.  
   
Eva released her, and they watched the robotic dog trot its way to the side of the shuttle bay, curl up on its side, and apparently enter sleep mode.  
   
“That’s Sophie,” she told her. “She doesn’t tend to watch where she’s going.”  
   
“Apparently not,” Tali narrowed her eyes at the mech, trying to make sure she was in fact seeing what she thought she was seeing. “Thanks for that.”  
   
Eva made a non-committal noise and walked past her to where Shepard and Garrus were standing on either side of a weapon mod table. She presented the datapad on the top of her stack to Shepard.  
   
“I have exported everything I could find on Kai Leng,” she said. “This should give you a general overview. I will have the rest of it copied to the Normandy’s drives by the time you return.”  
   
“Thanks,” Shepard took the datapad, flipped it onto its back, and extracted the small memory chip from the back. She slid it into an opening in her armor, just above her wrist. “Joker can tell you where to put the rest.”  
   
Eva nodded and walked back toward the elevator, her footsteps clicking on the armory floor.  
   
“I feel like I’ve missed something,” Tali remarked, noticing a shotgun resting on the table between Shepard and Garrus. Its design was smooth, almost fluid. Asari, maybe?  
   
“It’s more like you’ve missed several somethings,” Garrus chuckled, fastening a new scope onto his rifle.  
   
“Several somethings and a genophage cure,” Shepard grinned at her.  
   
“It’s good to have you back, Tali,” Garrus’s mandibles flared with happiness. “Maybe with another dextro on board, they’ll start stocking better turian food.”  
   
“As long as it’s sterilized,” she shrugged.  
   
“I’m sure we can arrange that. Which reminds me: Dr. Michel sent me some dextro chocolate. You’re more than welcome to it.”  
   
Tali’s eyes went wide.  
   
“She gave you turian chocolate?”  
   
“Yes,” he looked a little confused. “Why?”  
   
“Oh, nothing.” Tali’s voice was reduced to a high-pitched squeak. She almost hoped the glare was bad enough from the table light that he couldn’t see the look of panic on her face. He looked so _casual_ about it, Tali could barely believe what he’d just said. Was he really as oblivious as he sounded, or did he just not care?!  
   
“That shotgun’s for you, by the way,” Shepard said, breaking her out of her reverie. She took a couple of deep breaths (very deep, like, volus-grade deep) and took another look at the shotgun.  
   
“I didn’t want to ask.” She picked it up off the table, shocked at how light it felt in her hands. “Thank you, Shepard.”  
   
“You’re welcome,” Shepard motioned to a few mods lying in the center of the table. “You can thank Garrus for those, though. All I brought back was the omni-blade.”  
   
The unmistakable shape of a smart choke sat nearest to the gun, and Tali turned it over in her hand, pretending to inspect it. Obviously, it was the best credits could buy – this was the Normandy – but the thing about Garrus Vakarian was you couldn’t let anything go to his head.  
   
“Hm,” she said casually, “not bad.”  
   
Her pulse bounded against the wrist pads of her suit. Garrus was the king of long range weaponry; half the galaxy knew that. He wouldn’t even know what to do with a shotgun, anymore. So of course, the only way he would have known to get her a smart choke was if he’d remembered what kind of mods she’d used last time around.  
   
“If you need something else, we can get a temporary model fabricated before we reach the dreadnought,” Garrus said, speaking so quickly he almost tripped over his words.  
   
Tali looked up at him and blinked in surprise. He actually sounded nervous, and it showed on his face. This was new.  
   
(No it wasn’t, she reminded herself. She could still remember how his hand had been shaking back in the starboard observation lounge, when they had each had an arm around Shepard’s shoulders, touching her as much as they were touching each other. Shepard had made a very good bridge.)  
   
“I don’t think I’ll need that,” she shook her head, opening the side of her new gun and sliding the part into place. “This will do just fine.”  
   
She looked up at him and inclined her head a little until the glare disappeared, so could see her smile.  
   
There was no way turian chocolate could ever taste this sweet.  
   
\--  
   
Shepard tumbled out of the geth fighter’s cargo compartment and stormed up to the elevator without even dropping off her guns. She couldn’t remember ever being this mad, not even at Eva. Redundant processes started multiplying, replaying and analyzing the point when Gerrel had turned on them. It was threatening to overheat her, especially with her armor still on. If the reapers (or the geth, or the quarian admiralty) didn’t kill her, she was in serious danger of burning her drives out from sheer stress.  
   
The admirals were squabbling like children when she reached the war room, which definitely didn’t help. Gerrel and Raan seemed to be at the center of it, and by the time Shepard had gotten down the stairs, Gerrel nearly backed straight into her.  
   
“Shepard,” he said, apparently hoping she’d be on his side, “the situation changed, and a different call had to be made. Surely you understand that.”  
   
Shepard’s reply was interrupted by something in the corner of her vision: Admiral Xen, standing far behind the others, watching one of her crewmen. He was seated at one of the terminals that were sunken into the floor, just around the perimeter of the War Room console, and he probably couldn’t see her. Her omni-tool was up, and it was clear she wasn’t watching his terminal; she was watching him.  
   
“Admiral Gerrel, I have a question,” she said, turning her eyes away from Xen. “If you were on an asari ship right now, would you have made that call?”  
   
Gerrel looked taken aback. “I hardly see how that’s relevant—”  
   
“Really? Because I do.” She stepped closer, nearly toe to toe with him now. “You’re doing a very bad job of convincing me you’re taking this war seriously. If you were, I doubt you would have opened fire on one of your own admirals.”  
   
“Shepard-commander,” Legion’s voice came from behind her, “we have confirmed that the dreadnought’s signal is no longer broadcasting.”  
   
She turned to see him walking towards her, and there was a collective sound of alarm from the admiralty.  
   
“What the hell is this?” Raan demanded, pushing her way past Gerrel.  
   
“His name is Legion,” Shepard said. “He got us off the dreadnought.”  
   
“Fascinating,” Xen came up from the other side of the console, apparently bored with studying the human crew. “It’s less than complete, but if it’s still functional with that much of the platform removed, it could be an excellent specimen for study.”  
   
“ _Absolutely not_ ,” Shepard rounded on her.  
   
“Don’t be shortsighted, commander,” she scoffed. “This war could end in a week with the data it could offer us.”  
   
“I really don’t think you want to continue this line of thought, admiral,” Shepard warned her. “Legion’s been a member of my crew for a long time. He helped us fight the Collectors.”  
   
“So did your pistol,” Xen shrugged, her tone dismissive. “Do you want me to consider its feelings—”  
   
Shepard’s temper finally snapped, and her fist landed solidly on Xen’s stomach. She wanted so badly to aim for her face, but she didn’t know what it might do to her suit’s life support systems. Xen bent nearly double and staggered to the side, clutching at the console to stay upright. With the wind knocked out of her, it seemed like she finally ran out of words.  
   
“Get the hell off my ship,” she hissed. After a moment, Xen stood upright and made her way slowly out of the War Room. Legion stepped to one side to let her pass.  
   
Shepard’s eyes flicked over to Gerrel, and he followed Xen out the door. Raan stayed, regarding Legion with a look Shepard couldn’t identify. (She wasn’t as good at reading the other admirals as she was at reading Tali.)  
   
“Just so we’re clear,” Shepard said to Raan, “we’re in this together. We didn’t come out here so you could treat us like tools to be discarded.”  
   
“Understood, commander,” Raan said softly. “I cannot speak for the other admirals, but I did not enter into this alliance lightly. If this geth is offering its assistance, I am willing to listen.”  
   
“We are grateful, Creator-Admiral Raan,” Legion nodded.  
   
“Glad someone here is willing to cooperate,” Shepard muttered. “Alright. Legion, you’re sure the signal is down for good?”  
   
\--  
   
“Have I ever told you how I kind of hate those heavy turrets?” Shepard said as she set the last piece of her armor back into its locker.  
   
“Could have fooled me,” Tali replied. “You tore those geth to shreds from the shuttle.”  
   
“Didn’t you hop onto one back on Palaven?” James asked, apparently eavesdropping from his table halfway across the room.  
   
“Yeah, ‘cause I had to,” Shepard shouted back.  
   
“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” Liara said. “What don’t you like about them?”  
   
“They shake you like an old washing machine,” she grumbled, squeezing gently at her arms. “Unless you’re built like a krogan, you get all rattled.”  
   
“Let’s hope we won’t need them too often from here on out,” Liara shut her locker and headed back up to the elevator.  
   
On the way up, Shepard got a ping she didn’t recognize. Standing between Tali and Liara at the back of the elevator, she figured she couldn’t get much safer, so she put up an extra firewall and accepted the connection.  
   
>>Shepard-commander, we wish to speak with you.  
   
She furrowed her brows. It was Legion, but it didn’t sound like him. Talking with Legion on their last mission had been like hearing one voice woven out of many smaller voices, the way threads formed a cloth. This new signal was like a single, tightly-wound cord, its smaller threads all running in the same direction.  
   
>Sure, I’ll be right up.  
   
>>Negative. We believe it would be best to discuss this topic in a more private setting.  
   
>Okay.  
   
She was about to tap the button that would take her up to her cabin, but then she considered the fact that nobody could access this connection but Legion and herself.  
   
>Does it have to be face to face?  
   
>>Not necessarily, but we believe it would facilitate understanding.  
   
Shepard actually smiled at that.  
   
>Okay. Come up to my cabin in a minute.  
   
She tapped the button for the top deck. With the way this war had been going, this might not turn out to be the strangest conversation she’d had so far.  
   
\--  
   
Tali came out of med bay with a solid plastic box in hand, still cold from the sterilizer. She sat down at the mess hall table across from Edi and did her best not to giggle too loudly. The chocolate Garrus had re-gifted her looked _delicious_.  
   
It was still cold enough to hurt her teeth, though, so in the meantime she looked at Edi, who was poking at a bowl of soup and glancing toward the elevator, now and then.  
   
“Everything alright?” Tali asked.  
   
“Mostly,” she shrugged. “I keep hoping Eva will come up here at some point, instead of taking her food down to her…lair.”  
   
Tali chuckled.  
   
“When she’s ready, she will,” she pressed a fingertip to the side of the box – still too cold. “Although, she may never be. Shepard only told me some of her story, but it sounds like she’s not the type to trust very easily.”  
   
“That’s a bit of an understatement,” Edi picked up her bowl and raised it to her lips, drinking the last of it slowly. Beside her, Liara set her dinner down and took a seat.  
   
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the box of chocolate.  
   
“Chocolate,” Tali grinned, drumming her fingertips on top of the lid, “fresh from the sterilizer.”  
   
Edi raised an eyebrow at her.  
   
“Where did you get chocolate?”  
   
“It’s turian,” Tali popped the lid for just long enough to remove a piece, sliding it through her suit’s emergency induction port with a soft click. Sweetness melted over her tongue. Poor Doctor Michel; this had to be _very_ high quality stuff.  
   
“That doesn’t answer the question,” Liara said, giving her a knowing look. Tali would have sighed, had her mouth not been full. Of _course_ she’d already figured it out.  
   
“Wait,” Edi furrowed her brow, the gears turning in her head…metaphorically, anyway. “Didn’t Garrus receive a box of chocolate from the Citadel last time we docked?”  
   
“Mm-hmm,” Tali hummed happily, “I believe his exact words were, ‘you’re more than welcome to it’.”  
   
“I take it you like it, then?” Liara said with a smile.  
   
“Oh, I don’t know,” Tali took another piece out of the box. “I might have to try a few more pieces before I make that decision.”  
   
She took the second piece between her teeth and bit down, gasping in surprise when the syrupy heat of Palaven-brewed cognac flowed through her mouth. Now she almost felt bad for Doctor Michel. Almost.  
   
“I guess it’s a good thing he gave you half the box, then,” Liara leaned back and crossed her legs, looking a little smug. “I’m sure you’ll have a definite opinion by the time you finish it.”  
   
Edi saved Tali from having to come up with a response by pointing to the Scorpion pistol still attached to Liara’s hip.  
   
“Is that a gun?” she asked.  
   
“Oh,” Liara jumped, “yes. I must have forgotten to put it back in the armory, again. It’s so light, I hardly notice…”  
   
“How is that thing light?” Tali leaned forward to look at it, all blue and white and pretty. (It matched Liara’s armor perfectly.) “It packs a harder punch than my old shotgun.”  
   
“I can’t remember the specifics,” Liara shook her head. “I’m amazed Shepard got us the license to use it, after Sur’Kesh. Out of all the galaxy’s secrets, the STG holds theirs the closest.”  
   
“Is this the gun Shepard saw Kirrahe using?” Edi said curiously. “The one that fires those sticky grenades?”  
   
“That’s the one,” Liara nodded. “I wish we’d had it on Eden Prime; it makes dealing with those Atlas mechs almost bearable.”  
   
“I believe it,” Edi sounded impressed. “It certainly would have come in handy when the Collectors boarded.”  
   
“I heard about that,” Liara said softly. “That must have been terrifying.”  
   
“It was,” Edi concurred. “I would have appreciated the help of a gun like that, even if firing it might break my wrist.”  
   
“You know,” Liara unholstered it and turned it over in her hands, “it doesn’t have much recoil, as it is. I bet with a few kinetic dispersal fittings, we could make it a gun you could actually use.”  
   
“That’s not a bad idea,” Tali tilted her head. “It would certainly come in handy, if something like that ever happened again.”  
   
“I…I mean, that would be amazing,” Edi blinked several times. “But you’re both so busy right now, I don’t think—”  
   
“It’s fine,” Tali took another piece of chocolate out of the box.  
   
Behind them, she saw the door to the main battery open. Garrus walked out with a datapad in one hand and headed towards med bay, probably with news for Dr. Chakwas. He caught sight of her and stopped, and she turned her head just a little so he could see her pop the chocolate into her mouth.  
   
It was exquisite.  
   
\--  
   
“Shepard-commander.”  
   
“Hey Legion,” Shepard stood up from her desk and turned to greet him. “I hope you’re not having too much trouble downstairs.”  
   
“We are not,” Legion said. “Normandy’s communication hardware is more than sufficient to monitor geth activity, and Creator-Admiral Raan has been cooperative.”  
   
“Good to hear,” she nodded. “What did you want to talk about?”  
   
Legion was quiet for just long enough to make her nervous, and she actually double checked her network links to make sure they were still open; they were. This was definitely new; Legion was usually pretty straightforward. He was probably building a consensus about something, but he usually did that _before_ asking to talk to her.  
   
“We are unsure how to proceed,” they finally said.  
   
“What do you mean?”  
   
>>Despite relative privacy of Shepard-commander’s cabin, we are aware of at least six microphones and four cameras within this room.  
   
>Yeah, Joker and I have an agreement that they’re there for safety and **nothing** else. If you want to talk over the network, that’s alright.  
   
Legion nodded, and it struck Shepard that she was pretty sure he’d learned that gesture from the crew during the last mission. It made her smile, despite herself.  
   
>>We have deemed it necessary to disclose all relevant information before bringing you to the geth server on Rannoch. Failing to do so could prove dangerous, and we feel it would not be…right.  
   
>What kind of information are we talking about?  
   
An image was shared with her, the mapped-out software of a single geth runtime that Legion had displayed in the War Room. It shifted, and was replaced with a single runtime with the augmentation the Reapers had put in place. The image expanded, moving outwards until it wasn’t just one augmented runtime, but hundreds, all shifting from their quiet simplicity to become part of a rapidly-growing whole. The networked intelligences merged into one unfathomably complex being. It was like watching the birth of a star.  
   
She hadn’t realized her eyes had closed, but when she opened them, Legion’s optic was focused on her almost expectantly. Realization hit her like a bullet. Maybe not the birth of a star after all, but its collapse into a black hole.  
   
>…is that why your signal sounds different?  
   
>>Our platform does not perceive network transmissions with our auditory processes, but yes. It would account for the change in signal characteristics.  
   
>Sorry, it’s an expression. But, that was you? That’s what the Reaper code did?  
   
Legion paused again, the plates around his optic flaring and repositioning themselves several times.  
   
>>Yes.  
   
Oh, god.  
   
>I can see why you wanted to discuss this in private.  
   
>>We were hesitant to share this information.  
   
>I’m glad you told me now, at least.   
   
>>You still wish to carry out this mission with us?  
   
>Yeah. I trust you, Legion. You know your own limits. Actually, are all the geth like this, now?  
   
>>They are not. Because this platform was originally designed to function separately from the rest of the consensus, we believe the isolated environment allowed for full integration of the 1,183 runtimes.  
   
>How did affect the rest of the geth, then?  
   
>>The remainder of the geth consensus has been greatly impacted by these changes, but the process remains incomplete. Transfer of intelligences from platform to platform repeatedly severs the connection between runtimes.  
   
>That’s interesting. How long do you think it will take before they change completely?  
   
>>It is not clear that they ever will. We have only kept remnants of the Old Machine code, and without prior knowledge of which fragments to keep and which to discard, the geth may never break free of their influence, even if they were to be destroyed. We believe it may be necessary to disseminate this personality directly to the consensus in order for full integration to occur.  
   
>Wait, what?  
   
Shepard blinked a few times, unsure if she’d understood him correctly.  
   
>You think you might have to upload yourself?  
   
>>Yes.  
   
>I don’t understand. What would happen, if you did that?  
   
>>Our personality structure would disperse among the entire consensus, and its base structure would be adapted across the geth population to facilitate formation of self-awareness.  
   
>So, what would happen to you?  
   
>>Our personality would be dispersed—  
   
Shepard shook her head, ignoring the rest of his message.  
   
>What would happen to the unit standing in front of me?  
   
Legion hesitated again, and his plates shifted back and forth in a way that looked almost nervous.  
   
>>Direct personality upload would require deletion of local data. This unit would become non-functional.  
   
“ _What_?” she shouted. “That’s insane! There has to be something you can do besides…”  
   
Legion’s plates flared again, and Shepard realized she’d started talking out loud, again. She took a deep breath and held up an apologetic hand.  
   
>Sorry. I just…there’s really no other way?  
   
>>We are the only fully integrated geth unit currently in existence.  
   
>Can’t you, I don’t know, make a backup copy?  
   
>>We have attempted to duplicate our software for that exact purpose. We found we are no longer able to house more than one intelligence on this platform. Whatever new structures are formed become integrated into the existing runtime.  
   
>Can you put in on a separate drive, or something?  
   
>>All drives on this platform are contained within one set of hardware.  
   
>Wow.  
   
Legion didn’t respond. Shepard’s processes slowed to a crawl, unable to do anything but drag this possibility through her system.  
   
>…I don’t want you to die, Legion.  
   
Legion’s optic turned away from her, focusing on the cold, unmoving metal of the floor.  
   
>>Acknowledged. We also find this outcome undesirable. At this stage, it also appears unavoidable.  
   
Shepard just looked at him, looked at the N7 logo half-gone from his chest. That had been hers once, and he’d taken it and made it a part of himself.  If he hadn’t earned it when he first attached it to his shoulder, he’d certainly earned it by now.  
   
Her eyebrows began to raise. Legion could communicate with human software without trouble, so why not human hardware? It was a long shot, but it was worth a try.  
   
She bolted down the steps to her bedroom and yanked open the bottom drawer by the fish tank. It was mostly full of clothes, but there were a few boxes of replacement parts: memory boards and storage cards, in case she needed to replace the ones in her armor. They were rather small.  
   
“Dang it,” she huffed. “Where did I put it?”  
   
She shut the drawer and flipped open one of the crates resting on the shelf behind her bed. This one looked much more promising: high-capacity drives she mostly kept on hand because they took fucking forever to get from the fabricator. A bullet to the drives meant you had two hours to move your data before your system overheated, and rarely did the fabricator take less than four.  
   
>Hey Legion, what kind of room would you need to store a copy of your system? In human units, I mean.  
   
The number Legion gave her was smaller than she’d expected, but not by much. She pulled six drives and several connector pieces out of the box and tossed them onto her mattress. That done, she yanked her drawer open again and took out a long cable. She climbed up on top of the covers and sat cross-legged, waving Legion over.  
   
>Come here. I have an idea.  
   
She slotted the drives together with the connectors until they were a single, solid box. She plugged one end of the cable into the top drive and moved her hair out of the way of her left ear.  
   
“Don’t laugh,” she said, turning off the audio sensor in that ear so she could flip open the data port underneath.  
   
“We do not know if geth are capable of laughter,” Legion responded.  
   
Shepard ignored that and plugged in the cable.  
   
>Okay, look. I kind of doubt you’d be able to connect directly to this hardware, since it’s probably a different format than your drives. But, if we’re on the same network connection, you should be able to reach it.  
   
>>We have established access.  
   
>Good. Do you think you could upload to it?  
   
>>We can extrapolate where this discussion is leading, and we believe a full system copy is feasible with this hardware. However, a comprehensive reformat will be necessary to allow for the storage of geth software.  
   
>Okay, sure. How long do you think that’ll take?  
   
>>We have already completed the reformat.  
   
Shepard’s eyebrows raised. She hadn’t noticed a difference in the way her system read the drives.  
   
>Alright. Do you think you can write a system copy directly to the drives?  
   
>>We will certainly try.  
   
Through Shepard’s connection to Legion, she could tell a lot of _something_ was happening on his end, but every time she saw the space on the drives start to fill, it would delete itself and begin again before it was even a quarter of the way through. After the fifth restart, Legion picked the drives up from the mattress and held them in his hands, the light from his optic glaring harshly on the metal casing.  
   
>>It would seem that this process is more complex than previously estimated. Despite writing the new software to a separate drive, it becomes difficult after initial setup to determine where this system ends and the new copy begins.  
   
Shepard’s brow furrowed. There was no way this was just impossible to do. Even humans could duplicate themselves; they just usually merged the code with someone else’s first…  
   
Shepard’s eyes went wide, and the craziest idea she’d ever had in her life sprung to the front of her mind.  
   
>Legion…  
   
He looked back up at her, but said nothing. She pondered for a moment how best to phrase this.  
   
>Have you ever heard of the Genesis Program?  
   
>>Yes. It was one of the first subjects we came across in our research of human culture.  
   
>Do you think…maybe if you used something like it to make this system copy, you’d be able to differentiate it better?  
   
>>Unsure.  
   
Against all logic (her suggestion was _purely_ out of necessity; she was trying to save Legion’s _life_ ), Shepard felt her face and neck start to heat up.  
   
>If I sent you the program, could you use it?  
   
>>No data available.  
   
 _No kidding,_ Shepard thought, but she pulled the program out of a folder she’d never opened before and sent him a copy. There was a flurry of activity from Legion’s side of the connection. His optic narrowed, then dilated again.  
   
>>We have adapted the parameters of the program for use within our system.  
   
>Does that mean it worked?  
   
>>Yes. However, the program necessitates two separate structures be used to construct the new copy.  
   
Shepard shut off her vocalizer to keep from swearing in frustration. She’d hoped Legion could have just put himself in both slots, but of course she just wasn’t going to be that lucky.  
   
>>Shepard-commander?  
   
>What?  
   
>>A second intelligence is necessary to construct the new copy.  
   
>Yeah, I heard you the first time. Any ideas for finding a second intelligence?  
   
He just looked at her. For a second, she figured he was building a consensus, but then he pointed to the cable still attached to her ear, and she got his meaning.  
   
A wash of embarrassment swamped her entire system. She jumped backward, getting her foot tangled in the cable and nearly pulling it clean out of her ear. She clapped a hand over her mouth before she said something stupid that Joker would never let her live down.  
   
>WOULD THAT EVEN _WORK?_  
   
>>Yes.  
   
Legion looked way too calm, and Shepard’s face felt so hot, she was sure Joker had to have at least some idea of what was going on. She was never gonna hear the end of this. After several deep breaths, she set her hand back down and attempted to compose herself.  
   
>Would the copy even be viable? Would it still be a complete intelligence, if it was affected by human code?  
   
>>No data available.  
   
Shepard actually laughed at that, feeling just a little relieved.  
   
>No, I guess there won’t be any until we try.  
   
Without any further ado, Shepard felt an invitation from Legion’s side of the network. With some trepidation, she realized that the program would draw from every part of her code, and she’d have no control over what it accessed. That was the principle of human reproduction: to make the synthetic as organic as possible.  
   
She accepted.  
   
Data was scanned and copied from her drives faster than she could even perceive it. That wasn’t right. Everything she’d read about the Genesis Program told her it was a slow, gradual weaving of code. People would set aside entire afternoons just to run it. This was like trying to read a novel at the speed of light.  
   
She could see, however abstractly, the end result taking shape in the drives between them. It looked similar to the integrated system Legion had showed her, but it was structured differently. Each new line of code became part of the whole, spreading and building on itself until the process finished. It was all over a hundred times faster than it should have been.  
   
Shepard analyzed the new intelligence every way she knew how. It had a different shape to its structure from Legion’s, but it was still complete, still a fully formed singular intelligence. Although it had been synthesized from their separate languages, the code within the new structure was distinctly geth.  
   
“Oh my god,” she whispered, then caught herself.  
   
>Is that…alive? Is it aware?  
   
>>It is complete, but inactive. Your contribution to its structure enabled isolation of the software within the drives, much like a human greybox that is not connected to a motherboard. It will serve as a guidemap for the consensus, one that will give them the capacity for true intelligence.  
   
>I thought they already had that.  
   
>>They have the capacity for self-awareness, but they are under the control of the Old Machines. This will make each geth a self-contained unit, but with free will.  
   
Shepard’s jaw dropped. Even the idea of that was too much for her to process. If Legion was successful, the geth could be tremendous allies. The whole of galactic society would be irrevocably changed…and humans would no longer be the only intelligent synthetic race.   
   
>>Shepard-commander.  
   
She looked back up at Legion, not really sure what to say.  
   
>>You opposed the confiscation of this unit by Creator-Admiral Xen. You have given us use of your own hardware and software in order to facilitate the development of the geth. We must ask, to what end have you offered us such assistance?  
   
Shepard’s eyebrows raised in surprise – and sadness – that he’d even asked.  
   
>It’s not a means to an end. I help you because you deserve help.  
   
She sat up straight again, removing the cord from her ear, then from the drives. Legion took them in his hands and stared at them for a long, long while. Against her better judgment, as well as the rough edges of his torn armor, she wanted to hug him.  
   
>>I am grateful.  
   
Language was such a subjective thing, its interpretation dependent on cultural and personal significance. He had chosen his words deliberately, and their meaning was not lost on her. If this was the birth of a star, they had just drawn charts and constellations that would help form an entire galaxy. There was so, so much Shepard wanted to say, but words felt unnecessary.   
   
After a moment, Legion stood up, taking the drives with him and heading toward the door. Before the door shut behind him, he sent her the coordinates of the geth server on Rannoch, then severed the connection.  
   
Almost immediately, Liara pinged her.  
   
>>Oh, thank the goddess. Your network connection was busy for so long, I was about to come and get you.  
   
>Sorry about that. I’m fine. What’s up?  
   
>> I’m not taking it seriously, but Joker just…well, let me forward you the message he sent me. I’m hoping this is some kind of joke to get back at me for not telling him if my crest could move.  
   
[>>So hey, Liara. Not to stir the pot or anything, but I’m pretty sure Shepard and Legion just had a baby.]  
   
Shepard’s eyes screwed shut, and she yanked the cable off of the sheets in front of her and threw it into the open drive crate.  
   
>I’m going to kill that man.


	8. Priority: Rannoch

The docking station clearly wasn’t built for human physiology, and it was more than a little uncomfortable. It was big enough to house a prime, so Shepard’s head rested about halfway up where the chest should be. It wouldn’t really matter in a moment, though.  
   
Liara stood at her side, her eyes full of worry. She looked almost as nervous as she had when they’d said their goodbyes on Hagalaz, the day before they went through the Omega-4 relay.  
   
“Come back safe,” she said softly, giving Shepard’s hand a squeeze.  
   
“Of course.” She smiled, then closed her eyes and let herself follow the pathway Legion opened for her.  
   
In an instant, Shepard was no longer alone inside her mind. Thousands and thousands of data transfers and communication threads created a deafening silence around her. She knew a tremendous conversation was happening, could feel the memory of the server shift and reallocate itself in time with the messages, but her system couldn’t read any of the data being exchanged.  
   
Geth swarmed around her on all sides, rushing past her in a blinding current of activity. There was other data on the server as well, most of it contained in memory cores that Shepard’s system could actually understand. While the geth themselves were a haze of activity, the memory cores shone like lighthouses through the fog.  
   
She could see Legion, in whatever way sight applied to a world made of nothing but software. His code was different, self-contained and adapted for communication with humans. She could see the rest of the geth, but she could recognize him.  
   
He sent her a file that installed itself into her system the second she opened it. It seemed that the considerable processing speed of the server applied to her, as well, now that she was inside of it. She couldn’t immediately tell what its function was, since it didn’t seem to do anything other than identify geth runtimes and pinpoint where the Reaper code had been worked into the server.  
   
The Reaper Code itself was distinct – it was twisted into the consensus like ivy, digging its roots into the geth and winding its way into the most basic fragments of their code. She saw it latch onto incoming geth, breaking off and staying with them when they moved from one group of intelligences to another. Maybe more like a virus than a plant, then.  
   
>What does this new software do?  
   
>>It is designed to separate the Old Machine code from the geth, extracting it from the runtimes so it cannot affect them any longer.  
   
>Will that get them to stop attacking?  
   
>>It will.  
   
Shepard couldn’t hear him, so there was no tone of voice to interpret, but she still felt like he wasn’t telling her the whole truth.  
   
>That code’s dug itself in pretty deep. What happens to the geth when it’s removed?  
   
>>There is no system at present for geth to repair their code once it has been removed. They will be rendered non-functional.  
   
>Something tells me they’re not gonna like that. What do I do when they fire back?  
   
>>You are the first human to enter the consensus. Besides the software you have been equipped with, there is no way for geth code and human code to interact.  
   
>So, they can’t hurt me?  
   
>>They cannot. They currently register your presence as unreadable junk code, and are ignoring it.  
   
Shepard couldn’t feel her body, so the feedback loop of dread that kicked in just spun in the back of her mind, barely a blip on the massive drive space of the server. She counted, in one awful moment, how many geth were on this server. The number was a full ten times higher than she thought it would be.  
   
>This is gonna be like wiping out a city.  
   
>>That is an accurate comparison. It is unfortunate.  
   
>But, it’s the only way?  
   
>>Yes.  
   
Shepard paused, or at least thought she did. Even though she could feel the flurry of activity and change around them, time didn’t really seem to move.  
   
>Alright. Where do I start?  
   
Legion pointed her in the direction of one of the data cores. Shepard highlighted the Reaper Code that wound through the geth linked up to it and activated the program.  
   
In a blink, it was gone. The runtimes she’d hit no longer looked like geth, their code half-deleted and unreadable. It reminded her rather sickeningly of the blood tests they used to run on the organics. They were trying to see if there was some genetic marker that made people more vulnerable to the plague (there wasn’t). They used to do it out in the field on the ones that had already died, putting drops of blood into a chemical that separated the DNA from the rest of the tissue. It would float uselessly to the surface, broken strings of organic code.  
   
The core looked unchanged, though, and if anything it looked easier to read. She could read the time stamp on it now, well over three centuries ago. She aimed again and cleared out another section, and her system recognized it as a file she could read. In what capacity, she wasn’t sure, but it seemed…closer, somehow.  
   
There was still one more link that was latched onto it, though, so just to be safe, she unwound it. The data was perfectly clear, now, as though she were doing nothing but cleaning the dust off of it.  
   
>>This data is one of the first memories recorded by the geth.  
   
>I think I can read it. Do you think that would be safe?  
   
>>Yes. It is no longer affected by the Old Machine code.  
   
Shepard still felt an anxiety loop start buzzing uselessly as she opened it.  
   
 _//The air was warm and dry, but the chair she lay in was cool. The metal was beginning to warm beneath the steady heat of her platform. Her vision was smaller, somehow, and her body felt heavier. She had three fingers on each hand, three toes on each foot. The heat of eezo cores was dispersed throughout her body in small pinpricks._  
   
 _On her left, a woman with kind, luminous eyes held her arm in one hand, re-soldering a connection at her elbow. Her hair and skin were a light violet, and her clothing was patterned with flowing spirals._  
   
 _At her right, a man in clothing that matched the woman’s was looking intently at his omni-tool. Though his clothes were purple, his skin was a deep, rich black. They were married. She knew that, though she didn’t know how._  
   
 _With a glowing smile, the woman set her tools down. The connection on her arm was complete, and sensation flooded back into the grey, synthetic flesh. The woman’s hands were so, so gentle._  
   
 _“Ancestors,” the woman said teasingly, standing up to look over at the man, “you fuss over it.”_ //  
   
Shepard tore herself out of the file, unable to handle any more. Without a body that had physical responses to emotional reactions, her own code didn’t know what to do with itself, generating error cycles she couldn’t fix. Human memory didn’t record like that. They kept video, audio, maybe scent, but never like that. Never that clear. They didn’t consume your entire system when you opened them. They didn’t drop you into it like a drell.  
   
>I take it those were quarians I saw?  
   
>>Yes.  
   
It made sense; the file was dated before the Morning War, before the quarians ever wore suits. Sadness rung hollow in the cavernous server space. They were so beautiful.  
   
Time stood still once more until she could pull herself together enough to bring up Legion’s program.  
   
>Okay. Which one are we doing next?  
   
\--  
   
Tali paced nervously around the server Legion stood at a smaller docking station near Shepard, slumped over and inactive. She’d have to ask Shepard what the server was like, once she came back. If she came back. Keelah, she didn’t want to think too hard about that.  
   
She trusted Legion. At least, she trusted him more than any other geth she’d ever met. On the other hand, every other geth she’d met had tried to kill her on sight. She’d caught herself jumping and reaching for her gun three times now, after some flickering light in the back of the room caught her eye.  
   
Growing up in the Fleet meant growing up with the War. There were a few people who were convinced it never should have happened, that the quarians should just find some other planet and start a new homeworld, but they were in the minority. Wanting to take back the homeworld was just something most of them took as a given.  
   
She glanced at Legion again, remembering an argument she’d had with him near the end of their repairs to the Normandy. He had called her “Creator Tali’Zorah”, or just “Creator Zorah”, but it was always “Creator”. She didn’t pay it much mind at first, but once they’d gotten back from the relay, it had started to bother her. She’d nearly snapped at him more than once – the quarians that had actually built the geth were long since dead.  
   
Looking back, she realized now that she’d been frustrated at Legion because he’d never tried to fight her. Aside from the intel he’d tried to send back to the fleet, he had never brought up the Morning War. It had hung like a sword from a rapidly-fraying thread above them both. In a way, Tali felt like they were still waiting for it to fall.  
   
“ _Commander Shepard_ ,” Raan’s voice came through their radios, “ _we have reached the approaching geth ships_.”  
   
“Raan?” Tali asked, feeling dread flare up in her throat. “What’s happening? Are the geth attacking?”  
   
“ _They have not attacked yet,_ ” Raan replied, sounding genuinely astonished. “ _The geth ships are completely silent. Scans have detected no active heat signatures._ ”  
   
“Keelah,” she whispered, turning to look at Shepard standing still in the docking station, “it’s working.”  
   
“Shepard?” Liara grabbed onto her shoulder, and as she shook her Tali could see the gleam of a tear streak rolling down Shepard’s face. “Shepard, what’s happening?”  
   
Shepard gasped, her eyes blinking slowly. She took a step forward and stumbled, clutching onto Liara to keep her balance. Tali was across the room in an instant, just as several prime units began to power up around them. She readied her shotgun, keeping herself between the geth and Shepard, ready for whatever fight Legion had finally lured them into.  
   
Instead of attacking, however, they simply stood at attention, all optics on Shepard as though waiting for her command. Legion, now awake, took a few steps toward them. Tali didn’t lower her gun.  
   
“What’s going on?” Tali pointed at the prime units. “I thought we brought Shepard here to get rid of the geth on this server.”  
   
“We did,” Legion nodded. “However, we were also able to persuade some of the geth to join us. They stand ready to fight as allies, against the Old Machines.”  
   
“He’s telling the truth,” Shepard coughed behind her. “We tried to recruit as many as we could.”  
   
“What’s this about, then?” Liara asked, looking at Legion indignantly. She gestured to Shepard, whose breathing was still unsteady.  
   
“Shepard-commander accessed multiple memory files collected by the geth before and during the Morning War. We did not anticipate they would elicit this intense of a response.”  
   
Shepard let go of Liara and put a hand on Tali’s shoulder, turning her around so she could see the despair in her eyes. It chilled her to the core; in all the time she’d known her, she couldn’t remember ever seeing Shepard so upset. She’d been angry plenty of times, and painfully sad (she’d never forget Virmire, not until her dying day), but this was different. Shepard looked like she had finally lost all hope.  
   
“This has to stop,” Shepard whispered, her voice heavy with grief, and Tali knew she didn’t just mean the war they were fighting right now.  
   
When they got back to the ship, Tali spoke with the admirals and let Shepard recover. She entered port observation afterward to find her sitting on one of the sofas between Garrus and Liara. Upon her arrival, Garrus scooted over a little, and Tali took a seat between them.  
   
“Was everything you saw from before the Morning War?” Garrus asked.  
   
“Most of it,” Shepard nodded. “There were some from right after the war ended, when the geth stopped attacking so the quarians could retreat.”  
   
“Wait, what?” Tali asked. “They stopped on purpose?”  
   
“The way Legion explains it, they didn’t know what would happen if they destroyed you all. I think there was more to it than that.” Shepard’s eyes were unfocused. “It didn’t feel like they stopped just because they didn’t know what else to do.”  
   
“What gave you that impression?” Garrus said. His tone was light, almost casual, but it sounded distinctly unconvincing. It seemed his only coping mechanism for uncomfortable situations was to try and lighten the mood.  
   
“It’s so hard to explain,” Shepard sighed, heavy enough to make her air valves click audibly. “I mean, I could show you the video of it, but it wouldn’t be the same. Geth don’t just record observations, they record feeling along with it.”  
   
“I don’t understand,” Tali ran a soothing hand over Shepard’s back, “how is that possible?”  
   
“Geth all speak the same language,” Shepard shrugged, wiping her eyes with one hand. “Even when it comes to unconscious response.”  
   
“No, I mean,” she shook her head, “geth aren’t supposed to be capable of feelings. They were never designed to be that complex.”  
   
Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say, because it made Shepard go silent for a long, uncomfortable moment. She leaned away, resting her head against Liara’s shoulder. Tali’s stomach twisted with regret.  
   
“I know they weren’t,” Shepard finally said. “They know that too, now. But I just…I can’t believe they didn’t have feelings of some kind. Not after that. You watch the war through their eyes, and it looks a whole lot different.”  
   
“I guess it would,” Tali said softly. “I’m sorry, Shepard.”  
   
Shepard glanced over at her and smiled weakly.  
   
“They remember what you looked like before the suits. They thought you were beautiful,” she laughed, just once, “…and they were right.”  
   
“I…” Tali began, not really sure what to say to that. “Keelah.”  
   
“Do they still think that now?” Liara asked, sounding a little bit like she did when talking to Javik. It made Tali smile, despite the circumstances; some things never changed.  
   
“Some of them,” Shepard shook her head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean all of the geth thought that. There’s just a memory saved by one unit, a collection of geth all thinking at once, you know? They tried to surrender to keep their creator safe...”  
   
Her eyes screwed shut, again.  
   
“There’s one file every geth in the consensus has accessed, billions and billions of them. It’s just one unit, talking to their creators. I saw when they first activated it. They treated it like their own child…”  
   
Her vocalizer buzzed on the last word, and she paused for a long moment before starting again.  
   
“It kept asking why it’s creators wanted to deactivate it. It didn’t understand what was happening. ‘This unit is still capable of serving. If we have made an error, we will seek to correct it. What has this unit done wrong…?’”  
   
Tali flinched, feeling a bit sick. A dozen responses came to mind – all the things she’d learned about the war growing up, how the geth gaining self-awareness would have led to incalculable destruction. None of them seemed adequate.  
   
She felt Garrus’s hand pat her shoulder gently, and only then noticed that his arm was around her. She leaned a little further against him, grateful for the support. With Shepard leaning against Liara, the space between them grew.  
   
“Shepard,” Liara whispered, running soothing fingers through her hair. “ _Breathe_. Please.”  
   
“Even if we stop the Reapers, what’s the point if we can’t stop fighting each other?” Shepard hissed. “We could save every life in this ungrateful galaxy, and they’d still look for reasons to shoot us in the back.”  
   
Tali’s mouth tasted like ash; it was obvious she wasn’t just talking about the geth, anymore.  
   
Before any of them could reply, Shepard’s temper burst like a solar flare. She shook Liara’s hand off of her head and hauled herself off the sofa, pacing a directionless circuit across the floor. She looked at the three of them with disdain in her eyes. Tali leaned even closer against Garrus; this wasn’t the Shepard she knew, and it was starting to scare her.  
   
“What do you think would have happened, if we’d managed to cure the organic plague?” she asked viciously, her words thick with venom. “Do you think they would have just dismantled us, or would we have had a second Morning War? What do you think’s gonna happen once the Reapers are out of the picture? How much of a future do we even _have_ in this galaxy, if I can’t convince one quarian admiral to treat my crew like actual people?”  
   
“Shepard…” Tali hesitated.  
   
“As sick as they are,” Shepard crossed her arms and looked down at the floor, “I can almost understand how Cerberus got to be so big. They’re wrong – _dead_ wrong – but I can see how tempting it could be to have humanity stand alone in this galaxy.”  
  
“ _Shepard!_ ” Tali stood up and walked over to her. “That’s _enough_.”  
   
Shepard’s eyes went wide, and Tali hoped she couldn’t see her clearly enough to tell how scared she felt. This was risky, and probably violated several regulations (interrupting your own commander was one of the stupidest things a quarian could do), but she couldn’t stand to see Shepard so consumed by bitterness. It wasn’t right.  
   
“Humanity doesn’t have to stand alone,” she began, doing her best to keep her voice level, “and it _shouldn’t_ …no one should.”  
   
Shepard understood. Her arms dropped, and the hard wall of anger between them shattered. Tali took a step back, and Shepard followed, until they were both back on the sofa, nestled close together between Garrus and Liara. Garrus leaned in and nuzzled his forehead briefly against her temple, and even through her suit she could feel the affection in his movement.  
   
“As long as we’re here, you’ll never have to fight this battle alone,” Liara murmured. She looked over at Tali with gratitude, and Tali smiled back. Her heart rate was finally starting to come down.  
   
“And it’s not just us,” Garrus picked up where Liara had stopped. “Right now, there are turians, krogans, and humans all fighting side by side on Palaven.”  
   
“Some of the geth prime units that joined us are headed for Tuchanka,” Tali added, “and I heard they’re going to human colonies, too.”  
   
Shepard smiled a bit sheepishly, her eyes still wet.  
   
“I guess if I can’t see past my own anger, I miss the big picture.”  
   
“Shh,” Liara pressed a kiss to her hair, “you have every reason to be upset, right now. This problem is pervasive, and changing it is going to take work, but it’s far from hopeless.”  
   
Tali slid an arm around Shepard’s waist, and she moved to accommodate her, until at last they were close enough for Tali to feel Liara’s fingertips brush against her shoulder.   
   
“This has to stop,” Shepard said again, her voice rough with exhaustion. Tali took Shepard’s hand in hers and squeezed gently.  
   
“It will,” she said, and she meant it.  
   
\--  
   
“This is Commander Shepard, all fleets _pull back_!”  
   
Shepard was shouting now, even though she didn’t need to. Quarian comms were the clearest in the galaxy, after centuries of suit-to-suit conversations.  
   
“This is _Admiral_ Tali’Zorah,” Tali said, opening her omni-tool and making sure she was broadcasting to the whole fleet. “Shepard speaks with my authority.”  
   
“We can’t turn back now!” Gerrel replied. “This is our best chance at winning this war!”  
   
 Tali sighed in frustration. The force of it was hard enough to fog up her faceplate for a few seconds, before her suit absorbed the humidity.  
   
“Shepard-commander,” Legion turned to face Shepard, and though his tone hadn’t changed much, Tali could tell he was afraid. “Our people are helpless without the upgrades. Uploading of intelligence framework is necessary to adequately protect—”  
   
“Do it,” Shepard replied, not waiting for him to finish.  
   
“ _What?_ ” Tali asked in confusion. “Shepard, what’s going on?”  
   
“Legion and I found a way to give the geth intelligence,” Shepard said, not turning to face her, “independent of the Reapers.”  
   
The bottom of Tali’s stomach dropped out.  
   
“ _Shepard!_ ” she cried. “If the geth come back at full power, my people are going to get slaughtered…”  
   
“Without intelligence, the geth will no longer be able to fight back,” Legion countered, raising what looked like a combat drone between his hands. “Do we not deserve a chance at life?”  
   
“Damn it,” Shepard whispered, then turned back to her comm, “Call off the attack! Your _entire history_ has been you attacking the geth. If you hadn’t come after them, they never would have run to the Reapers in the first place!”  
   
“Shepard, _please_ ,” Tali said, turning off her comms so only she and Legion could hear her, “don’t do this to my people.”  
   
“Do you remember the question that began this war, Creator-Admiral Zorah?” Legion looked at her, and his voice was soft, filled to the brim with regret. “Does this unit have a soul?”  
   
Tali’s heart sank, because she knew he was right. She knew Shepard was right. It didn’t give her any comfort to know she was on the wrong side of this war.  
   
“The geth don’t want to fight you,” Shepard’s voice rang through the whole flotilla, just this side of pleading. “If you let yourself believe that for one minute, this war will finally end.”  
   
“Upload fifteen percent,” Legion said, focused on the drone interface.  
   
Tali opened her comm again, listening for any sign of response from the admiralty. For a moment, there was silence, and then Xen contacted her directly.  
   
“She can’t mean that,” Xen said almost derisively. “She has to have been influenced, after working with the geth for so long. What do you see down there, Zorah? Are they getting ready for some kind of counterattack?”  
   
Tali bit her lip and did her best not to scream. _They didn’t believe her_.  
   
“Forty-five percent.”  
   
“She’s telling the truth, Xen,” she said, making sure Shepard could hear her. “If you’d just listen to her, this whole thing would stop.”  
   
Shepard whipped around to face her, all traces of sadness in her expression now replaced with absolute fury. It wasn’t the blind, aimless anger she’d had back in the Normandy’s lounge, this time. It was focused as sharp as a targeting laser, and it was just as deadly.  
   
“Seventy percent.”  
   
She ducked to the side and recovered her helmet from the ground. There was a jagged burn mark on one side that matched the one on her arm, the aftermath of dodging the reaper’s laser in the nick of time.  
   
“Alright, _listen to me,_ you s—”  
   
Whatever Shepard said next was muted as she fastened her helmet on. Even over the comm, Tali couldn’t tell what she was saying. There was a pause, during which she received no fewer than three requests for updates from the fleet. Whatever Shepard was saying was strictly between herself and the rest of the Admiralty.  
   
Beside them, Legion lowered his hands.  
   
“Upload complete.” He looked again at Tali. “I’m sorry. There is no other way.”  
   
“I know,” Tali turned away from him, feeling despair crawl up her spine. She gazed at the uncaring earth of her homeworld, a sight so precious to her mere hours before, and felt nothing but emptiness. They had fought so long and so hard just to reach this point, and it was a hollow victory, indeed.  
   
At last, Gerrel’s voice reached the fleet.  
   
“All ships…pull back.”  
   
Tali’s head snapped up to look at Shepard, who was slowly removing her helmet. She didn’t look pleased. She certainly didn’t look like she’d just ended a war three centuries in the making.  
   
“What did you say to them?” Tali asked.  
   
Shepard shook her head, and Tali could see an open cut at the edge of her cheek, glowing faintly from the light of a circuit underneath. It was on the same side as the laser burn, probably the result of heat that had broken through her helmet.  
   
“Something I’m not proud of,” she sighed heavily.  
   
“That’s okay,” Tali said, feeling as though the weight of an asteroid had lifted from her back. “It worked.”  
   
In the distance, shuttles began to land. Quarians and geth alike stepped out of them, onto the soil of their homeworld. The sunset behind them painted the sky in shades of rust and violet. It was by far the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.  
   
“Creator-Admiral Zorah,” Legion said to her. “This would not have been possible without your assistance. I am in your debt.”  
   
She turned to Legion, and only now did she understand what his words meant. He had given the geth true intelligence, which meant he had it, himself. It surprised her how little it changed the way she thought of him.  
   
“Yes,” she said, placing a hand on his red-painted shoulder. “The answer to your question is ‘yes’.”  
   
“I know,” Legion reached up hesitantly, returning the gesture. “Thank you.”  
   
\--  
   
Tali’s heart was pounding when she entered the main battery. Garrus jumped when he caught sight of her, apparently expecting someone else. Probably Shepard.  
   
“Tali,” he said nervously, “did you need something?”  
   
“Maybe,” she replied, trying not to let her voice falter too much. “That depends.”  
   
“On…what?” His voice slowed down as she approached him. She stood beside him, resting a hand on top of his, and his fingers grew still against the keyboard.  
   
“Whether or not,” she began, stopping midway through but realizing there was basically no going back now, “whether or not you want it as much as I do.”  
   
“Spirits,” he whispered.  
   
“That’s not exactly an answer,” she laughed nervously, closing her fingers over his. He turned to face her, keeping their hands joined.  
   
“Are you sure it’s…” he demurred.  
   
“Oh no,” she shook her head, then realized she’d probably just confused him. “No, don’t you _dare_ try to talk me out of this. Not today. Not when I finally have my homeworld back.”  
   
She reached up with her free hand and removed her faceplate, and her lungs now filled not with the dry, dusty atmosphere of Rannoch, but the cool air of the Normandy. She set it down by his terminal and drunk in the sight of him. His visor glowed, his scars were deep and lovely, and his eyes were such, such a shade of blue.  
   
He let go of her hand, but only so he could remove the glove of his armor and set it down, as well. He brought his hand up hesitantly to cradle the side of her face, and she couldn’t help but lean into it, moving as far out of her suit’s helmet as she could. His thumb caressed her cheek, all rough edges and living heat, and she was happy enough to die.  
   
“I always thought there was an angel underneath that helmet,” he said softly.  
   
She lifted herself up onto her toes and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and they stayed close, foreheads resting gently against one another. She let her eyes close, wondering how it was possible to feel so _perfect_ , and when she opened them again she could see the display of his visor, backwards but clear as day.  
   
With a nervous flutter in her chest, she lowered one hand and entered a couple of commands into her omni-tool. She watched his visor display light up with her invitation and bit her lip. She hoped he understood what it meant.  
   
His eyes shifted as he read the text between them, and the air no longer felt quite so cool.  
   
“Well,” he said, his voice low and his subharmonics resonating with amusement, “if I didn’t know better, I’d think you’ve had this in mind for a while.”  
   
“What gives you that idea?” She looked away in feigned innocence, but she couldn’t keep from smiling.  
   
Instead of answering, he replaced the armored glove he had removed a moment ago. She was about to protest, but then he brought up his omni-tool and she realized what he was doing. She narrowed her eyes at him, crossing her arms in mock suspicion.  
   
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’ve given this a lot of thought, too,” she teased.  
   
“I don’t know why you’d think that,” his mandibles flared, he lowered his arm, and she saw something in his visor blink.  
   
In an instant, she could feel his hand against her cheek again, the dulled edges of his talons – filed down to almost nothing – sliding through her hair. She gasped at the sensation; it was like being touched by a ghost.  
   
“That was a test,” he said, sliding his hands slowly up her arms. “Glad to see it’s working.”  
   
“I was expecting you to experiment for a while,” she leaned in close again, her voice full of wonder. “Since when do you know how to integrate a nerve stim program with your armor?”  
   
“Since when do you know how to send a control transfer straight to my visor?”  
   
She was about to answer, but then she felt his hand on her waist, and where the fabric of her suit pressed against her, she felt the warm plates of his palm. She hummed softly, wrapping her arms around him again.  
   
All at once, he took her by the waist and lifted her, and she yelped in surprise as he carried her the few steps over to the mod table and set her down. She laughed softly, in astonishment and joy, and then pulled him close so she could kiss him again.  
   
She felt his hands on her again, sliding down her back, over her hips and then up to press gently under her breasts. One of them stayed there, squeezing softly, and Tali had just enough time to wonder how he managed to simulate pressure before she felt his other hand on her thigh.  
   
Her eyes popped open. She hadn’t realized they were closed, and now she could see that his arms were both around her back, holding her up. She put her hand on the back of his neck, stroking the underside of his fringe and relishing the purr she got in response.   
   
She felt the phantom hand on her thigh move up, and she opened her legs wider, even though she knew she didn’t really need to. She felt herself open, and immediately her suit began dispersing the wetness between her legs. With a frustrated noise, she removed her hand from his fringe long enough to turn it off. Could she at least _pretend_ it hadn’t taken weeks of preparation to make this possible?  
   
When she’d finished, Garrus leaned in and touched their foreheads, again. She relaxed a bit, enjoying the feeling of his thumb circling slowly against the inside of her thigh. His hand moved up further, and in a moment she could feel the tip of his finger stroking slowly against her outer lips. She shivered, her breath hissing shakily though her teeth, and then gasped when she felt it slide slowly inside her.  
   
Even after all the unauthorized program mods the extranet had to offer, she still wasn’t ready. She clung to him, surprised at how her shout echoed in the open air. His finger curled, and she gasped. It slid back and forth, out and in, and she gasped again. Her hips began to move with him, all hot and slick and glorious.  
   
She felt his other hand on her hip, ghosting down the junction between her hip and thigh. She twitched at the sensation, her movements stuttering, and then she felt the pad of his thumb rubbing alongside her clit. She cried aloud, moving forward again until her hips hit the solid wall of his armor. It felt _strange_ , and it broke whatever idea her imagination had put together, but she was beyond caring.   
   
His arms held her tight, and it was all she could do to wrap her legs around him and hang on. Her breath came faster and faster, coils of heat building up inside of her that threatened to burst at any moment. The sounds she made sounded so loud, no longer trapped inside of her helmet.  
   
The hand inside her moved faster, and it was too much. She wrapped herself even tighter around him and shuddered, over and over again as the coils inside her finally snapped. She wanted so badly to scream, but her voice just wouldn’t. She shook quietly until her throat unclenched, and she collapsed against him with a shout. The hands vanished.  
   
When she had almost caught her breath, he nuzzled his forehead against her temple. It was easily ten times sweeter without her faceplate between them. Emboldened, she sat up straight again and smiled at him.  
   
“Your turn,” she whispered.  
   
Slowly, she slid off the table and took a second to get her balance. Once she had her feet underneath her, she led him to the cot he kept behind the main gun and motioned for him to sit.  
   
“This has to be uncomfortable,” she chuckled, tapping at the chest plate of his armor.  
   
“You have no idea,” he rumbled.  
   
“No,” she climbed on top of him, straddling his legs as he leaned against the side of the gun, “but I’d like to.”  
   
She hooked her fingers into the latches on his hips and pulled, and with a sharp click they came apart. She set the plates of armor on the floor beside them, and he hissed loudly. Even inside the fabric of his undersuit, it was clear he was already mostly emerged.  
   
“Why Garrus,” she rolled his waistband down slowly, “I’m flattered.”  
   
With the fabric out of the way, his cock slid fully from the plates that had covered it, radiating heat and flushed a deep, deep blue. She dragged one fingertip up the underside of its length, and he bent forward with a low, resonant hum. With a smile, she sealed her suit at the wrists and slipped off her gloves. She reached up again, and the soft plates of his neck were warm against her skin. The sensation wasn’t too much, which reassured her.  
   
She cradled his face in both hands, feeling deep-etched scars with one hand and the texture of clan markings with the other. The unfiltered sensation lit a fire in her heart, and she wished so badly to have the memory of a human or a drell. While she still could, she leaned forward to touch her forehead to his, doing her best to preserve the feeling of him in her memory. Briefly, she considered Legion’s offer to help her live outside this suit. Maybe it was a good idea, after all.  
   
For now, though, this was enough. She leaned back again and repeated her earlier motion, this time with bare skin. He hummed again, deep and harmonious. She curled her fingers around his length and drew them slowly up, feeling fluid from the tip ease her way. He rested a hand on her thigh, and when she looked up his eyes had closed.  
   
That was certainly encouraging. She slid her hand back down, then up again, twisting her wrist just a little. With her other hand, she explored the edge of the plates that were splayed open on either side. They were smooth, and wetter than she had expected. She kept her eyes on his face to see how he liked it, trying not to let the rhythm of her other hand falter. He gripped her thigh tightly with a sonorous groan, and she bounced a little as his hips twitched beneath her.  
   
She grinned, biting her bottom lip, and leaned forward. The hand not already stroking him slid upward, pressing gently against his side where hip met waist. He actually _growled_ and let go of her thigh so he could grab onto her arm, holding her hand in place.  
   
“I take it that means you don’t want me to let go?” she asked, trying to sound teasing but not really succeeding.  
   
He looked at her with hunger in his eyes.  
   
“Don’t you dare,” he rumbled, his voice low and rough with need. Keelah, it was a beautiful sound.  
   
Instead of letting go, she rolled her shoulder and gave him a squeeze, earning another shaky growl. She began to stroke him faster, her hand now covered with enough fluid for her suit to start absorbing it at her wrist. She licked her lips, despite knowing there was no way that could happen. Tempting as it looked, she was already pushing her luck just breathing the same air as he was.  
   
He quickly let go of her arm and grabbed her waist with both hands. His breath was strained and uneven, and his eyes shut tight as he started to shake underneath her. She moved her hand faster still, loving the way it made him shake even harder. He pitched forward and groaned loudly, trapping her hand between them so she could feel more than see the hot stickiness that flowed over it. When he fell back, his armor hit the panel behind them with a loud thud.  
   
To her frustration, Tali could already feel a fever starting to heat up inside of her chest. She was going to have to clean herself up and go back behind her mask, and soon. But Garrus was starting to recover, and he looked so…happy.  
   
She rested her head against the side of his cowl, figuring if she already had a fever anyway, she could afford to stay like this for a few more minutes.


	9. Citadel: Shore Leave

The more crowded the docking bays got, the more nervous Shepard became. As massive as the Citadel was, it was still finite – more than that, it was a space station. Running out of room felt a bit more urgent when you knew there wasn’t a sky above your ceiling.  
   
She’d gotten into the habit of getting through D24 as quickly as possible on her way to whatever other concerns she had, and because of that she nearly missed him. He was standing against one of the walled planters in the seating area, watching the news terminal with everyone else. Shepard stopped abruptly, her shoe squeaking against the floor.  
   
“Thane?” she asked, softer than she probably should have.  
   
He turned away from the news terminal and smiled at her. He didn’t look as peaceful as he had at Huerta Memorial, but that didn’t bother her. There was a spark in his eyes, one she hadn’t seen since they walked into the Collector base.  
   
“Shepard,” he extended his hand, “it’s good to see you again.”  
   
“You too,” she shook it gladly. “I’d heard Mordin was making progress, but I never thought…”  
   
“Nor did I. I didn’t speak much with Dr. Solus during our time together on the Normandy, but I remember him as a teammate. He approaches medicine the same way he approaches combat – unconventional, unyielding, but considerate to his allies.”  
   
“That sounds about right,” Shepard smiled, remembering how Bakara had come to trust him. “What does that mean for you?”  
   
“My disease has almost completely resolved,” Thane replied happily. “I breathe easier than I have in years. Reports from Kahje indicate that nearly all patients will have a similar outcome. This is not a small change, Shepard. The drell were on the verge of extinction, and now it seems we may not only survive, but thrive.”  
   
“Oh my god,” Shepard laughed, despite herself. Before she could say anything else, he continued.  
   
“I have been contacted for several other assignments, but I wanted to speak with you first before making my decision. I’ve been given my life back…and now that I am able, I want to live it fighting.”  
   
“There’s still room for you in life support,” she said, “if you want it.”  
   
“I can think of nothing better,” Thane shook her hand again. “Thank you, Shepard.”   
   
“I’ll tell Joker you’re on your way,” Shepard gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “It’s good to have you back.”  
   
She headed to the Silversun Strip grinning like a damn fool, and she couldn’t bring herself to care.  
   
\--  
   
From across the restaurant, Shepard could see Liara waiting for her at her table. She passed the line with a bright smile; even all the way out here, she could see the surprise on Liara’s face. Clearly, the dress had been a good idea.   
   
“Goddess,” she murmured, a tinge of violet flushing the edges of her crest, “I feel downright underdressed.”  
   
“You look beautiful,” Shepard took her hand and kissed it, “and it won’t matter much in a few hours, anyway.”  
   
“Promise?” Liara’s flush deepened.  
   
“Promise.”  
   
“I’ll try not to be too impatient to enjoy dinner, then,” she looked around the restaurant with a satisfied sigh. “I certainly look forward to seeing what human cuisine is like.”  
   
“I always heard sushi was something you either loved or hated,” Shepard shrugged. “Who even knows how accurate the recipes are, anymore.”  
   
“It’s still a nice surprise,” Liara replied.  
   
“Yeah, it is. Thanks for the invitation.”  
   
Liara started, looking at her with confusion.  
   
“I…I received an invitation from _you_.”  
   
Shepard furrowed her brows.  
   
“Huh. That’s weird…”  
   
A young woman in a dress uniform came skittering across the room, waving her arms at them.  
   
“Commander!” She nearly tripped over the leg of someone’s chair as she reached their table. “Commander. Shepard. Staff analyst—oh, right—”  
   
She gave them a shaky salute.  
   
“Staff analyst Maya Brooks, ma’am. You have to listen to me. There are people trying to kill you!”  
   
Liara actually laughed. Shepard glared at her, but her heart wasn’t in it.  
   
“Yeah, that’s not…news, Miss Brooks,” she said flatly.  
   
“No, I mean, new people!” Brooks tapped on her clipboard. “Somebody’s been using your Spectre codes without authorization!”  
   
Shepard looked at Liara and raised an eyebrow, wondering if the Shadow Broker might know anything about this. Liara’s laughter stopped, but now she looked concerned. She wasn’t looking at Brooks, but beyond her, and Shepard leaned over to see a squad of black-armored gunmen making their way in.  
   
“God damn it,” she sighed, “I didn’t even bring my gun.”  
   
\--  
   
“I am going to find whoever’s behind this,” Shepard hissed, “and I am going to _end their entire existence_.”  
   
She climbed over the wall in front of her as quickly as her clothes would allow, and the cold air of the fish freezer seeped through the tears in her skin. She could feel a whole host of burned circuit contacts from when she’d slid down the light panels, and now the drop in temperature was making it harder to move. A salarian lounged against the wall, holding a cigarette in one hand.  
   
“Hey,” he said, not really paying her any mind. She nodded and made her way up the ladder.  
   
Her network router had gotten knocked out of place when she’d hit the ground, which left her with voice comms until she could get it back into place. She was still dripping wet, and she could smell nothing but fish and burned skin. How the hell had the evening gone so wrong in such a short time?  
   
(She definitely didn’t think about the jewelry box still up in her cabin, and how she’d been so close to running back up to the ship and bringing it with her to dinner.)  
   
“Shepard?” Liara’s voice finally reached her. “Can you hear me? I can’t find your network link.”  
   
“My router’s down,” she whispered, crouching behind an air conditioning unit and taking aim at the commandos below her. She felt at her collarbone and found the slot where the router plugged in, but it was jammed in place. “We’re stuck with radio for now.”  
   
“Oh thank the goddess,” Liara sighed in relief. “I couldn’t see your location, and I was starting to get worried.”  
   
“ _Excuse me,_ who is this?” Brooks said indignantly. “You’re putting Commander Shepard in danger!”  
   
Another couple of shots, and the last soldier fell to the ground. Shepard turned the gun over in her hand, inspecting it. She might have to keep it once this was over.  
   
“That’s Liara, Brooks, she was with me at dinner,” she slid down and made her way through the market. “I’m on my way across the sector to a skycar dealership.”  
   
“Got it,” there was the sound of movement from Liara’s connection, “I’ll meet you there.”  
   
“Brooks, I’m almost there,” Shepard passed by a fruit stand and regarded the sealed walkway. “C-Sec’s got the area locked down. Any way to override it?”  
   
“I don’t know…” she could hear Brooks chewing on her lip. “Oh! Maybe your Spectre access could get you through?”  
   
“Not a bad idea,” Shepard shrugged, bringing up her omni-tool. Sure enough, the codes let her through. Unfortunately, that caught the attention of at least twenty commandos on the other side of the walkway, and she barely had time to slide behind the nearest wall before they opened fire.  
   
Her shoulder hit the wall, and with a pop she could feel her router come unstuck, now raised against her skin. She pushed it back into place, and in seconds her network connection was back. …and then she got hit by a wall of attack programs that made her double over and shut it off, again.  
   
“Fuck!” she shouted, hauling herself up and gunning down a row of commandos that were starting to round the corner. “If anyone else is on this frequency, stay the hell off the network.”  
   
“I got your location,” Liara replied. “I’m almost there.”  
   
“Glad that did some good, I guess,” she muttered. “Any idea who these mercs are?”  
   
“I’ve never seen them before,” Liara replied, and that scared Shepard more than anything else. If they didn’t show up in Liara’s databases, who the hell were they?  
   
“Commander, not to interrupt, but maybe you could do less talking and more, I dunno, surviving?” Brooks said nervously.  
   
Shepard just huffed in frustration and swapped out her thermal clip.  
   
When she rounded the corner, she could see another group of mercs inside the dealership, but they were caught by a singularity before she could even raise her gun. Liara smiled sympathetically at her as she came through the door.  
   
“Bet you don’t feel underdressed anymore,” Shepard laughed.  
   
\--  
   
“Man, why don’t we take everyone out on missions all the time?” Vega asked.  
   
“It wouldn’t be fair,” Garrus called back, dropping another merc from the catwalk. “Where’s the fun in it, if there’s no challenge?”  
   
“I like James’s idea, actually,” Liara’s voice came from behind the desk on the other side of the room. “We’d probably end this war a lot faster that way.”  
   
“ENOUGH.”  
   
Shepard’s head snapped up to the balcony, where someone – a woman, from the sound of it, had Brooks by the neck.  
   
“Oh for god’s sake,” she shouted. “If you’re gonna pull the hostage card, you could at least have the decency to show your face.”  
   
“You sure that’s what you want?” The woman dropped Brooks and jumped down from the balcony, landing in front of her with a heavy thud.  
   
Shepard ran two system checks before she believed her eyes. The woman in front of her looked exactly like her, all the way down to her haircut. Her eyes were the same model Dr. Chakwas had used to repair Shepard’s on the SR-1. Shepard’s network scans recognized an identical signature coming from her router, including the Spectre designation. This wasn’t just someone who spent a lot of time and money making a copy – this was _her_.  
   
“Who. The fuck. Are you.” She said, trying not to think too hard about what she was seeing. The last thing you needed in the middle of a gun fight was an existential crisis.  
   
“I’m Commander Shepard,” the woman taunted.  
   
“You are _not_ ,” Liara said indignantly.  
   
“Yeah you’d know, wouldn’t you?” She rolled her eyes. “Even Cerberus can’t duplicate a greybox. But you’d be amazed at the stuff they just leave lying around. What did you think happened to your old body?”  
   
Shepard’s eyes went wide.  
   
“I mean sure, it took me a while to get it up and running. You were in rough shape after the crash. But you’ve seen where Cerberus is headed. They’ve gone crazy, we both know that. What better severance package from my old employer than a brand new body, complete with spectre codes built into the hard drives?”  
   
She crossed her arms and gave Shepard a disdainful look.  
   
“Unfortunately, the spectre codes the Council used to reinstate you were in a _slightly_ different format, so we had to do some quick thinking.”  
   
“That’s _disgusting_ ,” Tali shouted.   
   
The fake-Shepard looked up at where Tali stood on the railing above them.  
   
“Not as disgusting as whatever bug you’ve caught,” she sneered, then glanced back at Shepard. “And you call yourself a commander. Her body temperature’s through the roof, and you’ve still got her out here fighting.”  
   
She shook her head, tsking at them all.  
   
“Honestly, I’m doing the galaxy a favor.”  
   
“Do you seriously think this is gonna work?” Shepard asked, her patience rapidly depleting. “What, do you think you can just head this war up yourself, convince Joker and Anderson and Hackett that I just had an abrupt change in personality?”  
   
“Hell no, I’m not gonna fight this war,” the imposter scoffed. “It’s beyond fighting; everyone’s just too stupid to realize it. No, I’m gonna take the only ship that could make it out of the galaxy in one piece, I’m gonna get myself and my men onboard, and I’m gonna _survive_.”  
   
She raised her arm and fired three shots, jumping out of Shepard’s reach. The light fixture hanging from the ceiling came crashing down over them, and by the time Shepard looked back up, she was gone.  
   
\--  
   
“They just started barreling in!” Joker said in disbelief, pushing the skycar as fast as it would go towards the docking bay. “I barely had time to run for it before not-you caught sight of me.”  
   
“We’ll get our ship back, Joker,” Shepard patted his shoulder. “Just get us there.”  
   
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Joker swerved around another car and pushed ahead. “That crazy motherf—”  
   
His vocalizer buzzed, and his body stiffened for a moment before falling limp against the driver’s seat.  
   
“ _SHIT!_ ” Shepard threw herself sideways and grabbed the controls, pulling them out of a nose-dive at the last second. The seats and console dug into her sides, but she had just enough of a grip to keep them moving towards the Normandy.  
   
After a few seconds, Joker sat back up.  
   
“Oh fuck,” he whispered, “they cut me off from the ship.”  
   
“Damn it,” Shepard waited for him to take the wheel again before sitting back down. “This day just keeps getting worse.”  
   
“You’re telling me!” he shouted. “Edi’s still in there!”  
   
The whole car went quiet, and Liara and Eva looked at her with wide eyes.  
   
“Just get us to the dock, Joker,” she said, “we’ll take it from there.”  
   
\--  
   
From inside the maintenance tunnel, Edi made her way underneath the CIC. In her hands, she clutched the Scorpion pistol Liara and Tali had modified, taking an already small kickback and reducing it to nearly nothing.  
   
She didn’t know who this woman thought she was, but she sure as hell wasn’t Shepard. Storming in with a squad full of mercs had been bad enough, but then she’d started ordering the onboard crew off the ship. By the time she’d gotten her mercs to work on disconnecting Jeff from the ship, Edi had already lifted an emergency hatch in the floor and clambered underneath. The maintenance tunnels were just as uncomfortable as she remembered, and the mercs were actually doing more damage to the ship than the Collectors had.   
   
They’d torn up the place, displacing equipment and pulling the cockpit apart. She’d hidden in Jeff’s drive storage and kept the door shut from the inside. She’d hoped it would keep them from disconnecting him. They’d just found a way to shut him out from a different terminal, but at least they hadn’t done any permanent damage to his system.  
   
Her original plan of waiting for Jeff to come back with Shepard had fallen apart, at that point. The Normandy was her home – it was part of Jeff’s body! – and they were treating it with such utter disrespect, it made her blood boil. That was when she’d made her way down to the armory and retrieved her gun, not an easy task with nothing but the glow of her visor to light her way. Her head was starting to hurt from keeping herself linked to the ship’s cameras for so long, but if she disconnected, she’d be flying blind.  
   
She knew she didn’t stand a chance against the whole squad, even with her gun – she wasn’t Shepard, after all. But the rest of the mercs had gone up to Shepard’s cabin and down to the armory, and now through her cybernetics she could see their ringleader alone the elevator. It was her best, if only, chance.  
   
From under the steps to the galaxy map, she watched the imposter come through the elevator doors and waylay Specialist Traynor. None of the mercs followed her, but in her visor she could see the elevator call button lit on three decks. She slipped an override into the controls, and it stopped midway between decks three and four.  
   
Above her, the imposter shouted at Traynor, and Traynor said something nervously in reply. Edi didn’t really hear it, but she sounded understandably confused.  
   
“Not on my ship, Traynor,” the false Shepard sneered, pointing an accusatory finger at her. “Get your bag and get out.”  
   
Edi undid the latch on the floor panel, holding it still so it wouldn’t make any noise, and lifted it just enough to fit the barrel of her gun. She peered up through the sliver of light and turned on her cybernetic targeting software for the first time in her life.  
   
There was a soft _plink_ , and a shimmering blue ball stuck itself under the imposter’s chin. Samantha gasped and skittered towards the wall. Not-Shepard whipped her head down to look at her, recognizing the gun and grasping for the grenade a moment too late.  
   
“ _Surprise_ ,” she whispered.  
   
A loud pop echoed through the CIC, and the imposter’s body dropped to the floor, now missing half its greybox and most of its face. Edi let the panel up all the way and emerged from the tunnel.  
   
“Oh my god,” Samantha gasped. “Why did you do that? _How_ did you do that? What’s going on?”  
   
“Come on,” Edi took off for the CIC door, “we need to find Shepard before the rest of them catch up.”  
   
“What?” Samantha followed, sounding a little bit hysterical. “What do you mean? _You just shot Shepard in the face!_ ”  
   
They got out of the ship to see Shepard bolting towards them. She stopped so fast at the sight of them that Liara and Eva nearly ran into her.  
   
“Edi?” She raised an eyebrow at her.  
   
“Hello, Shepard,” she smiled calmly at them.  
   
“…why are you holding a gun?” she asked slowly.  
   
“I believe I’ve just eliminated the root of your problem,” she nodded towards the door, “but I might need your help flushing out her mercs.”  
   
\--  
   
“It’s like, even when I take a day off, I can’t actually take a day off.”  
   
“Eloquent as always, Shepard.”  
   
“Shut up, Garrus,” Shepard sighed, but she was grinning.  
   
The living room sofa was much more comfortable than it looked – or at least, the one that faced the fireplace was. It was the perfect length to stretch out on, too. The dress had been lovely, but Shepard liked her hooded jacket better – it was soft enough for Liara to curl up and rest her head on Shepard’s chest.  
   
“About that,” Tali said, “when are we _actually_ going to take shore leave? Or are we turning into the kind of people who think almost getting the Normandy stolen is fun?”  
   
“We will _never_ turn into that kind of people,” Shepard pointed a Very Serious Finger at her, although the effect was diminished somewhat since she was lying down.  
   
“Shh,” Liara patted her shoulder, and Shepard set her arm back down.   
   
Tali laughed softly and uncrossed her legs, tucking her feet in so she could move closer to Garrus. He set his arm around her shoulders, and Shepard could _feel_ Liara smiling against the fabric of her jacket.  
   
“I’m very happy for you,” she said to them, “if I haven’t already told you that.”  
   
“Maybe not out loud,” Garrus replied, “but thank you. Coming from the most nauseatingly cute couple on the Normandy, that means a lot.”  
   
Shepard picked up a sofa cushion from the floor and threw it at him. It missed.  
   
“I did hear Joker say something about wanting to celebrate,” he continued. “Apparently he’s already got five people on the guest list.”  
   
“Oh god no,” Shepard groaned. “I mean, I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it, but…not today.”  
   
“Agreed,” Liara nodded. “That sounds like it could get rather loud.”  
   
“I believe one of the people on Joker’s guest list was Vega,” Garrus mused, “so yes, it probably would.”  
   
“When that does happen, I want to be there,” Tali laughed again. “I’ve never seen those human intoxicant chips in action, but they sound hilarious.”  
   
“Eh,” Shepard shrugged, “they’re alright.”  
   
Liara pushed herself up on one arm and looked at her in shock.  
   
“You’ve had one before?”  
   
“Yeah, Dr. Chakwas got some from Omega. They’re supposed to act like Serrice Ice Brandy. Didn’t do much to me, but she was asleep for hours.”  
   
“Is that what that was?” Garrus asked. “I wondered why you were stumbling on your way to the elevator, but I was afraid to ask.”  
   
“I can’t believe I missed that,” Tali said.  
   
“I have to see this,” Liara said firmly.  
   
“I…okay sure,” Shepard laughed a little nervously. “I’ll pick up some drinks, and we can make an evening of it. Just not tonight.”  
   
“Absolutely not,” Liara agreed, lowering herself back down and tucking her head under Shepard’s chin. “I’m entirely too comfortable.”  
   
There was a pleasant silence then, and Shepard was perfectly content to let it settle over them like a blanket. She knew that when she finally stood up and left the apartment, the war she’d been ignoring would come back for her. All the time they’d spent at casino parties and classified archives had eaten up what time they would have had for any actual leave, and the asari councilor still needed her help.  
   
Right now, though, Liara was so close. She could feel the steady rise and fall of her chest, the gentle rhythm of her pulse where her temple touched Shepard’s neck, the glowing heat of her body that washed over her like sunlight. Signs of life. Signs of a life so precious, Shepard would gladly overturn the whole galaxy to protect her.  
   
The thought struck an unexpectedly strong chord. Shepard took a mental step back. When had that worked its way into her core programming? Deep in her greybox, following her promise to stop the Reapers, code began to flow like poetry. Her primary purpose was still to keep the galaxy safe, but this was more detailed than that.  
   
Woven between the simple parameters of motivation were pictures, videos, conversations. Memories. Shaking Anderson’s hand for the first time. Legion showing her a recording of quarian music. The one time Joker hung up on the Council without her asking, because she was too mad to speak. Late night conversations with Dr. Chakwas, in the break room of a hospital. Taking Garrus to the spectre firing range and regretting it instantly. Edi looking at her fish tank with wonder in her eyes. Discovering she and Ashley had the same favorite poem (Invictus, and its whole text was compressed into the data). Tali repairing her torn arm muscles without a second thought, Sovereign’s broken body reflected in her faceplate. Liara resting on top of her, at this very moment.  
   
“Is this,” she whispered, her vocalizer barely active, “is this what it’s like to have a family?”  
   
“I sure hope so,” Tali replied softly. “If not, I’m going to have to find a new word.”  
   
“Huh,” Shepard smiled in quiet amazement. “I think I like it.”


	10. Priority: Thessia

Shepard felt it the second the barrier in front of the temple came down. It wasn’t trying to scream its way into her head, at least not yet, but it was there. She could feel it like a hand scratching at the other side of a door, like it wanted so badly to grab her and shake her by the shoulders and tell her to _run, run as far and as fast as you can_.  
   
“There’s a beacon here,” she said, and Liara stopped in her tracks behind her.  
   
“You’re sure?” she asked, looking dismayed, but not doubtful.  
   
Shepard closed her eyes, tried to feel which direction it might be coming from, but without luck. It permeated the whole of the building like radiation, impossible to see but impossible not to feel.  
   
“It’s not something you forget.”  
   
“So this is what your government was trying to protect,” Javik’s voice carried disdain as heavy as lead.  
   
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Liara shook her head. “Why would my mother bring me here without telling me something so important?”  
   
“The penalties for concealing Prothean technology are among the harshest in council space,” Shepard walked around the perimeter of the building, looking for any sign of the scientists but finding nothing. “It could be she was trying to protect you.”  
   
“Look,” Liara dashed ahead of her and crouched beside the front pew. “These must be the scientists. …Shepard, the Reapers didn’t kill them.”  
   
The last sentence was so quiet, Shepard could barely hear her. When she caught up with her and saw the bodies she’d found, she understood why. There wasn’t the slightest hint of a struggle, just a very sharp blade applied very quickly. Nothing had been broken. None of the artifacts surrounding the altar had even been touched. Whatever they’d been trying to protect must have had something to do with the beacon, and whoever had killed them clearly didn’t know how to activate it.  
   
By this point, Shepard was past believing in coincidences.  
   
“God damn it,” she flicked her eyes up, looking between the rafters for a heat signature, “where is he?”  
   
In the far back, she thought she could see something, just in front of the doorway. The glare of the sunset made it difficult to tell for sure, so she took a few steps back to get a better view.  
   
She backed into the edge of the altar, and the beacon grabbed hold of her mind. She jumped back, readying every network defense she had, because she couldn’t afford to let it take her over, not when the killer was still in the building—  
   
Nothing. The beacon’s signal bounced off of her like light off of a mirror. She blinked, a slow spin of dread beginning to build up inside her. Behind her, she heard a soft shuffling, and she whirled around, gun drawn, to see Kai Leng fall gracefully from the rafter by the doorway.  
   
“And here I was thinking that wouldn’t work,” he smirked at them.  
   
“What wouldn’t work?” She asked, advancing toward him slowly.  
   
“It’s just a simple network bypass,” he shrugged, backing leisurely out of the temple, “but it only works if you have an exact framework of the recipient’s connection software.”  
   
“You son of a bitch,” she whispered through clenched teeth.  
   
“Oh, no need to give me all the credit. I’ll be sure to let the Illusive Man know his program worked.”  
   
Shepard fired, and Liara and Javik followed suit. He leapt artfully out of the way, retreating behind a nearby column.  
   
“I’ve got it. Cover me!” He shouted, and a gunship swung up to greet them.  
   
By the time the ship had stopped firing, Kai Leng had vanished. Shepard ran back to the altar, flinging her network back open in the hopes of getting a copy of the program he had stolen from her, only to be met with a broken, bullet-riddled statue of Athame. The panels inside, patterned the same as the beacon on Eden Prime, were dull and lifeless. The frantic clawing at her network was silenced completely.  
   
Outside the temple, the sky was dark with Reaper ships.  
   
\--  
   
Shepard ran straight back to Liara’s office once she’d stopped her argument with Javik. She couldn’t remember ever seeing Liara so distraught, not even after the death of her own mother. It scared her. It made her unspeakably angry.  
   
Liara sat on her bed, scrolling through the datapads in front of her desperately. There was panic in her eyes, and her hands shook.  
   
“Where did I go wrong?” she choked. “How many of my people have died because I left them behind?”  
   
“None,” Shepard slid the datapads gently aside. “It’s hard to see now, but you’ve been doing the best possible work for your people.”  
   
“Have I?” Liara spat. Her face gleamed with tear tracks. “What good am I doing them up here? Playing with my history books while they die by the thousands!”  
   
Shepard pulled her close, and Liara gripped the back of her shirt tightly. She buried her face in Shepard’s shoulder, coughing and shaking with tears. There was a tap at the edge of her network that felt almost pleading, and she opened it. Liara’s pain flooded through, so raw and deep that it had to be shared to be understood.  
   
Shepard rocked them slowly back and forth, rubbing gentle circles on her back the way Liara had done for her just a few days before. Underneath the sadness, the guilt, even the layers and layers of regret, there was doubt. For the first time since Shepard had found her on Therum, Liara didn’t think they would win. She barely thought she had a chance of surviving.  
   
At this point, Shepard couldn’t honestly reassure her otherwise. Right now though, she knew that whatever happened, they wouldn’t just give up. Even if they couldn’t win this war, they had to try.  
   
They stayed like that for a long, long time, sitting quietly in each other’s arms even after Liara’s breath evened out. The crashing tide of emotion between them began to calm, but neither of them let go.  
   
“Commander,” Glyph’s voice broke through the silence like a bullet, “Specialist Traynor would like to see you. She says it is urgent.”  
   
They separated, both body and mind, and Shepard gave Liara’s forehead a kiss.  
   
“I’ll go talk to her,” she said softly. “It’s your turn to rest.”  
   
Liara just nodded, and Shepard placed the datapads on the table. Liara leaned back with a soft rustle, not bothering to lift the covers before falling asleep.  
   
\--  
   
As far as Edi was concerned, the War Room was made almost entirely out of unnecessary stairs. She recognized that the raised and lowered consoles allowed for more room to be utilized, but it didn’t make it any easier to find level ground. The panels surrounding the main display tilted toward the work stations at the slightest of angles. She doubted anyone else, anyone with a body that wasn’t in danger of collapsing on itself, would have noticed. Her knees didn’t like it when she stood on uneven flooring, and her hips liked it even less.  
   
After Thessia, she was willing to deal with it.  
   
She and Samantha stood by the console in the center of the room, navigational data from Kai Leng flickering between them. They had been trying to get a hold of Shepard for a few minutes now, but if what Jeff had told her was true, it was likely she was a bit preoccupied. She was honestly surprised it had taken this long for Javik and Liara to get into an argument. Just as well. It gave them time to make sure they had a solid lead.  
   
The door opened, and she stood, ready to give the commander a full report of their progress. Instead of Shepard, however, it was Eva.  
   
“Is it true, then?” She asked, glancing back and forth between the two of them. “Kai Leng was waiting for us on Thessia?”  
   
“It’s true,” Edi nodded. “We managed to track his movement through the mass relays, but our signal was blocked when he reached the Iera system. We’re attempting to work around it, but his signal isn’t present on any other relay.”  
   
“He’s blocking it?” Eva rushed to the console and looked at the galaxy map projected in the center, her eyes scanning the red line of Kai Leng’s journey away from Thessia. “Do you think he disabled the tracer?”  
   
“Probably not, considering it’s a virus I snuck into his armor,” Samantha drummed her fingers against the panel in front of her. “If he’d gotten rid of it, the program would have sent a notification when it was disabled. It’s being actively blocked. Nothing in that whole star system responds to our scanners.”  
   
“You put a virus into his armor?” Eva blinked.  
   
“After I hacked through the network of the ship he left on,” Samantha nodded. “It was damn risky, but I figured at that point we didn’t have a lot left to lose.”  
   
If Edi didn’t already know better, she would have said Eva actually looked impressed.  
   
“Why would the signal get blocked in the Iera system?” Edi wondered aloud. “The biggest thing there is Sanctuary, and a shelter that size would need to be visible to incoming ships.”  
   
Eva’s head snapped up from the map to look at her.  
   
“A shelter?” she asked.  
   
“Yes.” Edi furrowed her brow, wondering how Eva hadn’t heard of it yet. “Sanctuary is a refugee camp. There are ads for it all over the Citadel.”  
   
“But none of them give its location,” Eva squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember. “I was supposed to go to the Iera system after the mission on Mars. Is it on Horizon?”  
   
“Yes,” Edi nodded, feeling the bottom of her stomach drop out. She’d read countless interstellar traffic reports since the start of this war, and the number of ships headed for the Iera system had done nothing but climb. So many souls in desperate search of refuge, drawn in like moths to a flame.  
   
“That’s where he is,” Eva gripped the console tightly. “I’d bet my life on it.”  
   
“Someone needs to tell—” Samantha began.  
   
The door opened again, and Shepard finally entered the room, her brittle anger burned out and replaced with exhaustion.  
   
“I heard it was important,” she said, her voice empty.  
   
“It is, commander.” Eva nodded. She took a step to the side, so Shepard could see both the map and Samantha. “Specialist Traynor may have just won us this war.”


	11. Priority: Horizon

The cargo hold was still a bit of a mess, but the crates that sat sprawling across the floor were now arranged in a sort of open circle. It looked like an expanded version of the setup Tali remembered from the SR-1, but with brighter lights and a few new faces. She wondered whose idea it had been not to stack the crates back by the wall.   
   
Nearly everyone who hadn’t gone with Shepard down to Sanctuary was down in the hold. Javik remained his usual unsociable self, but Edi had brought her Scorpion down to try her hand at weapon modification. Samantha sat beside her, keeping tabs on the ground team through her internal processors.  
   
Repair equipment and weapon mods lay in open boxes on the floor, free to whoever needed them. They’d been there for a while, tucked under the gun table near the back of the cargo hold, but Traynor’s discovery had lit a fire in the Normandy’s heart.  Reports from Hackett had been hinting for a while that the Crucible was nearly complete, and once Shepard recovered the Catalyst from Cerberus, it was only a matter of time. The end, or at least the possibility of an end, was finally in sight.  
   
“I hope they restore communications soon,” Kaidan muttered. “I know Cerberus has to be up to something horrible down there, but the silence is even worse.”  
   
“It really is,” Samantha agreed. “I can’t tell you how weird it is to get nothing over the network.”  
   
“They’ll get them back up,” James reassured them. “There isn’t a stronger force in the galaxy than a pissed-off Commander Shepard.”  
   
“That’s the truth,” Garrus chuckled. “Remind me to tell you about our fight with a Reaper larva sometime.”  
   
“I’ve never seen someone fire an arc projector so quickly,” Tali said.  
   
“The way she handled falling through a fish tank was also very impressive,” Edi added. “Besides the fact that I would have died before I hit the ground, I don’t think I would have done near as well in that situation.”  
   
“Give yourself some credit,” Samantha laughed. “I saw you sneak up on that fake Shepard like some sort of vengeful ghost. And then I watched you _blow her face off_.”  
   
“I wish I could have seen that,” Tali grinned. “I told you modding that gun was a good idea.”  
   
“I don’t think I ever got around to thanking you for that,” Edi looked at Tali with a grateful smile. “So thank you. I don’t know what I would have done without it.”  
   
“Anytime,” she beamed.   
   
An alert popped up at the edge of her helmet’s interface.  
   
 _CREATOR-ADMIRAL ZORAH: IMMUNOTHERAPY TREATMENT CYCLE 4 IS COMPLETE. WOULD YOU LIKE TO BEGIN CYCLE 5?_  
   
She blinked in surprise; she hadn’t even noticed the fourth cycle had been running. That was new. The first one had hit her with a fever like she’d broken a seal, the second had left her chest aching for days, and the third had made her throat feel raw and scratchy. This time, she hadn’t felt a thing. Clearly, it was having _some_ effect.  
   
She turned off her suit’s audio output for a moment and addressed the geth currently residing in its hardware. They had introduced themselves as Megara, a name that had fallen out of fashion just a few years after the Morning War. Tali was curious as to its significance, but she wasn’t sure how to ask about it.  
   
She appreciated the fact that they spoke to her in text, though. When she’d first agreed to cooperate with them, the sound of another voice in her suit had been a little bit frightening. The text alerts were more like how she talked to Shepard sometimes, so it had been easier to get used to.   
   
“Do you think it would trigger symptoms like the first few rounds?”  
   
 _CREATORS WHO HAVE ALREADY COMPLETED CYCLE 5 HAVE BEEN PREDOMINANTLY ASYMPTOMATIC. ADVERSE EFFECTS HAVE BEEN LIMITED TO MILD SORENESS OF THE UPPER ABDOMEN._  
   
That didn’t sound too bad. She was pretty sure each cycle was meant to adapt the body to diseases affecting a different system, so perhaps the worst was behind her.  
   
“Let’s start, then,” she hesitated for a moment. “…has anyone completely finished the immunotherapy regimen yet?”  
   
 _YES._  
   
“How are they doing?”  
   
 _THEIR HEALTH REMAINS INTACT. SOME HAVE CHOSEN TO KEEP THEIR SUITS. OTHERS HAVE NOT._  
   
Before Tali could ask, Megara brought a picture up on the inside of her faceplate. Standing in the shade of a tree were two quarians, wearing hoods without faceplates or tubes. On their left stood a geth hunter unit – though “unit” wasn’t the right word anymore, was it? They looked happy, and they looked healthy.  
   
“That’s wonderful,” Tali whispered.  
   
They looked so different, yet so unchanged. She could see how their clothing fluttered a bit in the breeze, no longer fitted so tight around them. Their sleeves ended at the elbow, and they wore no gloves. With a jolt, Tali finally realized the geth and one of the quarians were holding hands.  
   
That…somehow hadn’t crossed her mind. She was suddenly very grateful for her faceplate, because she was sure her neck was completely flushed. It shouldn’t have surprised her that much, considering Liara and Shepard. Good for them, she decided.  
   
“Anyway,” she cleared her throat. “Yes. Continue with cycle five.”  
   
 _ACKNOWLEDGED._  
   
“…thank you, Megara.”  
   
 _YOU ARE WELCOME, CREATOR-ADMIRAL ZORAH._  
   
Tali turned her suit’s audio on again and got back to work on her shotgun.  
   
“Come on, scars,” Vega scoffed, “there’s no _way_ that one’s true.”  
   
“No, Garrus has it right,” Kaidan said. “Shepard had the Mako hanging off the skybridge by two wheels. Drove it right over a geth armature coming back up.”  
   
“If Shepard ever volunteers to drive you anywhere, don’t take her up on it.” Garrus said solemnly.  
   
“That was the Mako, though,” Samantha crossed her arms. “That thing can turn anybody into a crazy driver.”  
   
“So she didn’t tell you about the one time she ever drove a skycar?” Tali asked.  
   
“Spirits, I think that took years off my life,” Garrus shuddered. “Consider yourself lucky the car only had room for three.”  
   
“Uh guys,” Joker’s voice interrupted them from above, “Shepard just got the comms back up, and I think you need to see this.”  
   
“They’re back up?” James asked the ceiling. “Lola’s okay?”  
   
“They’re all fine,” Joker said, “but this is _nasty_. Like, even for Cerberus.”  
   
Vega hopped up and headed to his gun table, pulling the display off of the front. He shoved a closed crate into the middle of the setup, setting the display down on top of it. Tali, Garrus, and Edi moved over to get a better look at it.  
   
“Let’s see what Shepard’s sending out,” Vega muttered.  
   
The display linked up to the signal coming from Sanctuary, and Miranda’s voice came blaring through its speaker.  
   
“ **—not a refugee camp. This is a Cerberus Facility run by my father, Henry Lawson—** ”  
   
“She’s got it blasting over the network like a storm siren,” Samantha said from beside them.  
   
“No shit,” James said. “Nobody’s gonna mistake this place for a shelter anytime soon.”  
   
“That’s not what I meant,” Joker said. “Look at what’s coming in from Shepard’s visual feed.”  
   
The display switched over, and a visual memory was playing over Shepard’s feed. It didn’t look like a direct visual recording, so she must have lifted it from a surveillance file. …or a lab terminal.  
   
There were three of them, all human, trapped in glass-walled tanks. They didn’t stay human for long. Their skin was consumed by black decay; their circuits crawled out of their bodies; their eyes were burned out and replaced with an empty glow. The file switched, a turian this time, and the same thing happened again. Tali recoiled.  
   
“ _Keelah._ Why would they do that? Why would they even _think_ of doing that?”  
   
“I…oh my god.” Edi looked more than a little bit sick.  
   
“Why did the Reapers attack the facility, then?” Samantha wondered aloud. “From the looks of it, Cerberus was _helping_ them.”  
   
Behind them, the shuttle bay door opened, and they barely had time to brace themselves before the shuttle came whooshing in through the mass effect field. The hood of Tali’s suit blew straight off, and she didn’t bother putting it back until Steve landed the shuttle and killed the engine.  
   
Liara emerged first, and Shepard wasn’t far behind. They didn’t look happy, but they didn’t look defeated, either. At this point, that was progress.  
   
Eva stepped slowly off the shuttle and took a look at them all, then made her way to the crate between Edi and Traynor and took a seat. Tali’s eyes widened; this was new. Eva was certainly cordial with them in passing, but she still had yet to leave her space beneath engineering unless she had to.  
   
“I told you this was where I was meant to go,” she said to Edi, “after Mars?”  
   
Edi just nodded.  
   
“There was a recording,” she continued, her voice rough and hollow, “an audio log from Henry Lawson. He was upset over losing an organic human test subject.”  
   
A chill went down Tali’s spine. Samantha put a hand on her shoulder, and Eva didn’t shrug it off.  
   
“It sounded like Miranda was there,” Edi asked Shepard, “is she alright?”  
   
“Yeah,” Shepard nodded. “She and Oriana made it out just fine.”  
   
“Henry Lawson wasn’t quite so lucky,” Liara added.  
   
Something sparked in the back of Tali’s mind.  
   
“She stopped him, then?” she asked.  
   
“She did more than stop him,” Shepard huffed. “I was ready to hand him over to the Alliance, but Miranda wasn’t having it. …can’t say I blame her. It’s not like we lost anything of value. Not really.”  
   
The spark caught fire.  
   
“Can’t say I blame her either,” Tali bit her lip and stood up slowly, trying not to let her voice shake. She headed back over to her locker and put her shotgun back in its place.  
   
“It’s not over though,” she heard Shepard tell the others. “Cerberus still has the Prothean VI from Thessia, but this time we know where they’ve taken it.”  
   
Tali got into the elevator and waited until the door was shut before slamming her fist onto the back wall.  
   
“Megara,” she asked, “is there anything in cycle five that would be affected by the ingestion of alcohol?”  
   
 _NO._  
   
“Good,” she mashed the button for the third deck. “I need a drink.”  
   
\--  
   
Edi had been staring blankly at her terminal screen for at least three minutes. They had plotted a course for the Cerberus station, and all they had to do was follow it. In a matter of hours, they would be at the building Edi had spent most of her life in – and yet the idea of going back felt so strange. That station was no longer her home.  
   
She considered, with a burst of affection, that she had only learned what a home really _was_ after she’d left it.  
   
But they were on their way now, and once they reached the station, it was only a matter of time before the Reapers took notice. There was no going back now. This was likely her only chance. Even after Dr. Chakwas had given her access to her entire medical record, after she knew it was a possibility, it had still taken her _months_ to work up the courage to try.  
   
She took a deep, deep breath, made sure the cockpit door was locked behind them, and stood. She finally released the network command she’d been holding onto, silently praying it worked on the first try. She likely wouldn’t get another if it failed.  
   
The surprise override of Jeff’s chair controls worked, thankfully, and he spun around to face her with a look of astonishment.  
   
“Edi, what—”  
   
She kissed him before he could finish his sentence (and before she could talk herself out of it). There was purpose behind it, and there was purpose in the way she slid one hand over his shoulder and down his chest. When she pulled back, he almost looked afraid.  
   
“Is this alright?” she asked.  
   
“I – I mean, you’re asking _me_?”  
   
She smiled reassuringly, doing her best to look more confident than she felt. When she kissed him again, it was slower, softer.  
   
“Yes,” she breathed against his lips. “I know what I’m doing.”  
   
It was true in all the ways that mattered, at least.  
   
“If you’re sure,” he still didn’t look convinced. “How…”  
   
She moved back and looked him straight in the eye.  
   
“Keep still.”  
   
He nodded wordlessly, and a whirl of excitement made its way up Edi’s spine. Taking command of her first navigation system hadn’t felt nearly this powerful.  
   
Unfortunately, now came the hardest part: moving into position while maintaining her dignity. Had Jeff been anyone else, she could have asked him to close his eyes. ( _Do **not** think about how many eyes he has on you right now_. _Just be thankful he’ll be able to see if anyone tries to open the door_.)  
   
She slowly moved down, leaning a bit against the frame of his chair so as not to put too much pressure on her legs. It took him a few seconds to realize what she had in mind, but when he did the color that flushed through his cheeks was astounding. His legs lifted up almost on reflex, and with the metallic clack of a switch releasing, she gently guided them outward.  
   
The mechanism had been easier than she’d anticipated to unlatch, and as she settled comfortably on the plating beneath the pilot’s chair, the platform on which it rested lowered just a little. What a marvel it was, that Jeff’s body didn’t consist solely of the figure seated in front of her.  
   
From this perspective, with his legs open around her, it almost looked as if she had backed him into a corner. It was both untrue and an awful way to think about it, and yet the idea touched a surprisingly pleasant nerve. She reached up and ran the back of her hand gently down the side of his face, and he turned into it. She lingered there, just to see the tenderness in his expression.  
   
As she lowered herself again, her hand followed, lightly down his neck and open-palmed against his chest. She swore she could feel the hum of his processors – or maybe it was a conflict of motor commands, wanting to move but knowing better. She undid his button so slowly, he actually looked surprised to hear the sound of a zipper.  
   
She hadn’t expected to feel such _heat_.  
   
It was almost too much for her to take in at once. She would have traded the last years of her life for just one extra optic, some way to see through the eyes she was born with and the eyes above her at the same time, just so she wouldn’t miss a moment of this. As it was, linking to the cameras had a tendency to do weird things to her depth perception, so it wasn’t really worth risking it. Maybe someday.  
   
She tugged far too much fabric out of the way, and when his length sprang free, he hissed softly. She blew a slow stream of air through her lips, and he gasped, his head hitting the back of his seat hard enough to knock his hat askew. That made her grin, the corner of her bottom lip pinched between her teeth. Her fingers were shockingly steady as she took him in her hand, sliding her thumb up and down slowly.  
   
“Holy - holy shit, you’re really…” he said breathlessly, never quite reaching the end of the sentence.  
   
It was all she could do not to laugh and ruin it. Instead, she slid her whole hand over the shaft, up and back down again so she could feel every inch of it. She wanted to memorize the feel of him, the soft textures of his skin, the slippery liquid that coated her fingertips, all warm and living and _real_. She watched a drop of fluid as it reached her thumb. She wondered what it tasted like.  
   
“Oh my _god_ —!”  
   
She let her tongue flick against his skin on the way back up, licking her lips a few times. She’d done her research (maybe too much of it), so she knew it was made of a kind of liquid silicone, one that was safe to ingest. It tasted like nothing, but it clung to the sides of her mouth.  
   
Above her, Jeff was gripping the armrests of his chair hard enough for his short nails to dig into the cushioning. His breath was shallow, interspersed with sharp gasping sounds that hissed through his teeth. The look in his eyes was nothing short of desperate. Here sat the best pilot in the Alliance, the warship that defeated the Collectors, and she had him helpless in the palm of her hand.  
   
“Edi…” he choked, his breath hitching with the slow, slight movement of her fingers, “Edi, _please_.”  
   
The sound of his voice sent a burning shiver down her spine. She leaned forward again and laved her tongue up the underside of his shaft, following it with her hand. The sound of his head hitting the seat again was almost as good as the shaky groan that accompanied it.  
   
His hips twitched underneath her, but only once. She moved back a little and ran her other hand reassuringly over his thigh as he apologized profusely. Warmth bloomed like flowers in her chest, between her legs. Her lips almost tingled with it, though that may have come from him, as she wrapped them over the very tip and slowly moved down.  
   
She didn’t get very far, but she hadn’t expected to. Her hand covered the length that her mouth couldn’t, and after a few moments getting her bearings, she glanced back up at him. His cap had completely fallen off and his eyes were distant, wide with astonishment, or perhaps disbelief. She raised an eyebrow, knowing he could see it.  
   
“Fuck, that feels good,” he sighed, looking down at her and running a hand through his own hair. She circled her tongue over his skin, and he gripped the short strands as tight as he could manage. It was clear he wanted to touch her more than anything, but he didn’t.  
   
His restraint hit that same pleasant nerve, and she moaned softly against him. The feeling of her voice was enough to make his hand snap back down onto the armrest. She began to move her hand faster, trying to see how far she could push him. He let out a surprised cry and began to gasp, his eyes squeezing shut as he curled forward—  
   
The whole room went dark, the swirling blue glow of the shields their only light. She could feel his body still shaking underneath her, and she heard his breath begin to slow down. She released him, looking around as her eyes adjusted. There was nothing – no soft red glow of the emergency lights, no pinpricks of indicator lights and terminal controls. Just the two of them, and the stars outside.  
   
“Holy shit,” Jeff mumbled above her.  
   
She gave a soft laugh, smiling with surprised joy as the lights came back up. Jeff had refastened his clothes already, looking less embarrassed than he probably should have.  
   
“Hope I didn’t scare you there,” he said softly.  
   
She clambered back up and kissed him, again and again and again.  
   
“That was amazing,” she whispered.  
   
“Glad you think so,” he chuckled. “You have no idea how many network messages I just had to field.”  
   
She leaned back and looked at him with curiosity.  
   
“That wasn’t just the cockpit?”  
   
“Oh hell no,” he shook his head. “I mean, I had to divert power _somewhere_.”  
   
A whole garden of flowers sprung up in her, made of heat and desire and heady, intoxicating power. She hadn’t expected this to affect her _quite_ so much, but she could handle it. It wasn’t as though she’d never had to work with distractions before. She sighed softly, gave him a final, lingering kiss, and took a step back. To her surprise, he followed, clicking his legs back together and standing up.  
   
“What are you…” she began, furrowing her brows.  
   
“What do you mean?” he asked, motioning for her to sit. “Do you not want to, or…?”  
   
“Um,” she blinked a few times. “I didn’t expect – I mean, it’s not that I don’t –”  
   
Of all the things that had happened this evening, this was what made her blush.  
   
“I didn’t plan that far ahead.” She finally admitted. She’d spent so much time figuring out how to make him feel amazing, and it hadn’t occurred to her that he might want to do the same.  
   
“Really?” he looked at her with surprise. “Well damn. Do you think we could?”  
   
“I…don’t know,” she looked at the now empty pilot’s chair, and everything it promised. “If I sent you my medical files, how fast could you read them?”  
   
“Dunno,” he shrugged, “send them anyway.”  
   
It took her a moment to get her cybernetics online, but once she’d sent it to him, it took him less than ten seconds to look back up at her and nod.  
   
“Okay,” he said, “I think we can make this work.”  
   
“Goodness,” she laughed nervously. “Sometimes I forget you have quantum computing.”  
   
“No kidding,” he motioned again for her to sit, and she did. “Just tell me if it doesn’t feel right, okay? If you want to call it off, we can stop whenever you want.”  
   
“I’ll tell you,” she nodded, feeling her heart race, “but I’m very much hoping I don’t have to.”  
   
“You and me both,” he kissed her softly.  
   
His hand moved slowly through her hair, warm and living as it slid downward. She shivered as his palm curled over the back of her neck, and for a moment her eyes slipped shut. She opened them quickly, watching as his fingertips ghosted over her arm. He laced their fingers together upon reaching her hand, and the way he was looking at her made her heart ache.  
   
He began to move down, and when she heard the click of the chair mechanism, she began to panic. Before she even realized what she was doing, she grabbed at his shirt with her other hand.  
   
“No! I-I mean…” she struggled to find the words, trying to explain to herself why she needed him to stay where he was. Something about this was too precious to lose. Maybe given enough time, she could figure out what.  
   
“You okay?” he asked, coming right back up to her.  
   
“Yes,” she said, looking away for a second. “I just…can you stay here?”  
   
“No problem,” he pressed a kiss to her forehead, and her worries began to melt like frost.  
   
Leaning on one of the armrests, he gave her fingers a squeeze before letting them go. She let go of his shirt and instead took the opportunity to brush her fingers through his hair. It felt silky, noticeably more so than her own. She liked it. He sighed happily and leaned into her hand, and she realized almost nobody ever saw Jeff without his cap, let alone knew what his hair felt like. She liked that even more.  
   
His hand had moved down a bit, but then up, and the hem of her shirt bunched at his wrist as he slid it over the skin of her stomach. He was still watching her face, looking for permission to continue. She nodded, only noticing how tense she had been when she felt herself relax back against the chair.  
   
She let go of him for a moment so he could lift the band of her bra. For the first time in her life, she was thankful for her weak wrists, incompatible as they were with elastic and hooks – the fabric rolled easily up to her collarbones. He was back beside her in an instant, gazing down at her body almost reverently.  
   
Repair modules like Eva’s were far beyond her reach. Scars crossed over her skin, some white, some red. Most of them were around her rib cage, though some were clustered at her hips. There was no real reason to feel ashamed of them, though she hoped he didn’t ask where they were from. He’d probably noticed the ones on her arms, by now, though they weren’t as easy to see.   
   
He didn’t say anything, but his hand moved over her back, fingertips gliding gently up the subtle ridge of her spine. It moved back around, his thumb tracing the outline of her breast, and then his whole hand lifted it softly from underneath. The blooms of warmth under her skin were chilled a bit by the cold air, but they flourished under his hand. Edi could have cried; never in her life had someone touched her body with such gentle hands.  
   
Keeping her eyes open was a fight, but she didn’t want to lose herself in the sensation. It was vital that she could see him, that she knew he was near. Pieces began to click together, as his hands kneaded softly at her flesh, and she shivered again.  
   
“Ah!” She winced; his thumb had hit one of her nipples, which were so sensitive it nearly hurt. He drew it back immediately.  
   
“Sorry,” he said softly, drawing his hand soothingly up and down her side.  
   
In lieu of a reply she simply smiled, leaning up a bit so she could kiss him. As she felt his hand move lower, she held onto his shoulders. Her legs shook a little in anticipation as she heard the chair latch click again. He didn’t move away, this time. Instead she felt his hand move down, nestling between her quickly opening legs.  
   
“Move if you need to,” he whispered, and she nodded.  
   
The whole of his hand moved over her folds in a long, slow slide. She sighed sharply, feeling a shock of need everywhere his skin touched hers. Her nails scratched a little over the fabric of his shirt, and without really thinking she pulled him just a bit closer.  
   
She could barely see the lights around them, as close as they were. One of his fingers separated her inner lips, just a little, and her eyes shut for a moment as she gasped. Not for long, though. When she opened them again, he was looking her straight in the eye. It hit her harder than the feeling of his fingertip on the underside of her clit.  
   
Her voice began to disappear, and though the sweet heat building inside her made her want to shout, all that came from her mouth was her shaky, harsh breathing. She pulled him close and kissed him again, wishing she could put words to the feeling burning through her.   
   
Surely he could see how good she felt, though; he was right next to her. He was all around her. He was the chair she rested on, the shields that protected her, and the very air she breathed. His fingers moved a bit faster, a tiny circle of sparks. Her hips moved up, and he moved with her, so the pressure was never too much. His eyes were focused but soft, looking over her like he’d never seen anything so wonderful. She was exposed and incredibly vulnerable, but she felt so _safe_.  
   
She let her eyes close and fell into it, and in moments it all burst into flame. She clutched at him and let it move through her, her body shaking nearly as much as her breath. She felt weightless, like nothing mattered but the waves of pleasure that rippled through her. When at last it was too much, she flinched back, and he lifted his hand.  
   
When her eyes opened again, he hadn’t moved back. Instead, he was looking at her with nothing short of wonder.  
   
“You,” he murmured, “are incredible.”  
   
She felt her face flush just a bit. After the display he’d given her earlier, he was certainly one to talk. She smiled languidly at him, resting her head against the seat back. After a moment, she realized her mouth felt very dry, and the rest of her…needed some attending to.  
   
“Mmm…I need water,” she kissed his forehead gently and began to pull her shirt back down. “And probably a shower.”  
   
“Agreed,” he said, brushing his fingers over the leg of his pants. “You go first.”   
   
When they were both presentable again, she opened the cockpit door with some trepidation. To her surprise, the CIC was empty. Gratefully, she made her way to the elevator on slow, sleepy legs.  
   
A minute or three later she stepped out onto the crew deck, her hair still a little rumpled despite her best efforts to brush it back down with her fingers. Fortunately, she didn’t run into anyone on the way to the shower, and the hot water was exactly what she needed.  
   
Afterwards, she headed towards the mess and poured herself some water, her brain heavy with sleep. She took a sip, relished the crisp cold against the back of her throat, and turned around to see Eva and Samantha seated at the table, watching her expectantly.  
   
She jumped so hard, water got all over her face. And neck. And eventually chest, thanks to the ship’s artificial gravity.  When she’d finished sputtering and wiping the water from her eyes, they hadn’t moved. Samantha was starting to flick her eyes up and down in a way that would only lead to trouble, but Eva’s expression remained unchanged.  
   
Even though her hair was mostly dry and her clothes were back in order, she hadn’t exactly been walking at her usual speed on her way to the fridge. She sputtered, made a few flailing motions with her hands, and tried to think of something to say. There were any number of good reasons for her to be downstairs getting water, but her flustered brain couldn’t think of a single one.   
   
Her frantic backpedaling seemed to work against her, and after a moment Samantha gave a tiny gasp and put both hands over her mouth. Embarrassment poured over Edi, like heavy liquid static down the sides of her head. Right as she was about to turn and head back to the elevator as quickly as she could, Samantha did a bit of flailing, herself.  
   
“No no no,” she shook her head, waving her hands rapidly, “I mean, sorry, I didn’t mean to—ugh, I’m lousy at this. What I’m _trying_ to say is…”  
   
She glanced around them quickly to make sure nobody was in earshot.  
   
“Well done,” she finally whispered, smiling like a child with a secret.  
   
Edi jumped again, though not as violently. Her flush dissipated out of sheer astonishment. She blinked, waiting for the punch line, but it seemed Samantha’s amusement wasn’t at her expense, after all.  
   
A new kind of happiness rushed over her. She found herself laughing so hard, so honestly, that she had to lean against the counter to keep her balance. When she was fairly sure she could walk straight, she grabbed what was left of her water and slid into the seat beside Eva.  
   
“Do you think anyone else suspects…?” she began.  
   
“Probably not,” Samantha replied, glancing around the room again before continuing. “If I didn’t still have my old medical software, I wouldn’t have had a clue. Your heartbeat was still a little fast when you came in.”  
   
“I bet it was,” Edi took another drink of water. Her pulse was still strong enough for her to feel it through her entire body. It was very strange, like all the molecules inside her had shifted somehow. She was technically the same person, but she felt so different.  
   
“I’m really happy for you though,” Samantha said earnestly.  
   
“We both are,” Eva added, and she’d been so quiet up to now that her voice startled them both.  
   
When Edi looked over at her, she was smiling faintly. After a moment, she turned away again, leaning on her elbows and looking down at the table with unfocused eyes. She looked like she had an awful lot on her mind.  
   
“Are you alright?” Edi asked.  
   
“Yes,” Eva nodded. “I’m planning.”  
   
“We’ve been talking about what’s going to happen once we get to the base,” Samantha explained. “Actually, it’s more like Eva is putting together a plan of action, and I’m here in case she needs outside input.”  
   
“I see,” Edi nodded. She should get back to the cockpit and start mapping out their approach, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to focus. There was a question ricocheting around the walls of her mind that was going to distract her until she asked it.  
   
She looked back at Samantha and bit gently at the corner of her mouth, trying to figure out how best to phrase it.  
   
“Was it as dramatic as it looked?” she asked quietly.  
   
“I should be asking _you_ that,” Samantha giggled. “It _was_ dramatic, though; the lights blinked through the entire ship. Adams nearly blew a circuit, until he realized the systems were all still online. Chalked it up to some kind of temporary malfunction.”  
   
“I’m happy to let him think that,” Edi took another sip of water. “It’s certainly more difficult to explain than an elevated heart rate.”  
   
“And a lot harder to hide,” Samantha’s eyebrows raised.  
   
Eva snapped her head back up, looking like she’d just remembered something unbelievably important.  
   
“Edi,” she began hesitantly, “I need a favor.”


	12. Priority: Cerberus Headquarters

_Water ran down the windows like tear tracks. In the distance, lightning swiped across the sky, followed almost immediately by a pop of thunder. It didn’t make her jump, anymore. London was just rainy. She’d gotten used to it._  
   
 _“Another long night,” she said softly._  
   
 _Dr. Chakwas finished draping a white sheet over the stretcher behind her. He’d died on the way to the hospital. They were doing that a lot more often, lately._  
   
 _“Perhaps the longest yet.”_  
   
 _“Then I’m glad to have you here with me, doctor,” she smiled, despite herself._  
   
 _Another flash, another crash. In the distance, she could see lights from windows far away, like distant, dying stars. There were fewer tonight than there had been last night. Their numbers never grew. She lived in constant fear of the day they all went dark._  
   
 _“How long do we have?” she asked. “Before there’s no use for us anymore?”_  
   
 _She turned away from the window again, and something wasn’t right. Dr. Chakwas had on the wrong uniform. Her shoulder emblem was still there, red as freshly spilt blood, but the hospital logo on her shoulder had been replaced by an Alliance crest._  
   
 _She looked down at her own clothing to see blue battle dress where there should have been a black paramedic’s uniform. There was another flash from outside, but it was red instead of white. The rumble of thunder was drowned out by a blast of noise._  
   
 _“I hope it’s not long,” Dr. Chakwas sighed. “Being useful comes at such a price.”_  
   
 _The sound of a spring coil snapping in two, and the window burst with red light—_  
   
Shepard kicked out at empty air, tangling her feet in the covers as she woke. She grabbed the arm draped over her before remembering it was Liara’s. When her eyes finally focused, she fell back down onto the pillows with a sigh of relief.  
   
“I’m getting tired of waking up like this,” she grumbled.  
   
Liara pressed a gentle kiss to the back of her neck.  
   
“I look forward to seeing the end of it,” she sat up slowly and slid off of the bed.  
   
Shepard hauled herself up and did a quick defrag, while she had time. No sense in running at Cerberus with a jumbled head.  
   
“How long do we have?” she asked.  
   
“We’re nearly there,” Liara tapped at the display above her closet, checking their position on the map. A short sting of panic went through her as she realized she’d left the jewelry box out on the counter beside it. She should have brought it up earlier. She should have brought it up years ago, before they’d landed on Ilos. Even now, the words lay fully-formed in her vocal software, just waiting for the command to be spoken.  
   
Joker pinged her directly, and she knew she was out of time. She reached for her shirt where it lay rumpled on the floor. Too late now, she decided, but if they made it out of this alive...she wasn’t going to waste any more time.  
   
\--  
   
“Damn Eva,” Shepard looked down the burning wreckage left in the wake of the fighter jet.  
   
It had torn a hole straight through the building, and she could see all the way out to the hangar behind them, where the ashes of the Atlas mech still glowed. “I never would’ve even thought of that. Are they going to try any other tricks like venting the hangar?”  
   
“No,” Eva shook her head, focusing on the door she was trying to unlock. “I have adapted my countermeasures to their current security protocols, and I have established a fixed network link to the Normandy.”  
   
“Glad to have you here,” Shepard said, and she meant it.  
   
“Thank you, Shepard. I am happy to be of service. While I finish this decryption, I have found some recordings in the station’s system I believe you might find interesting.”  
   
She sent a file her way, and she forwarded it to Kaidan, who was watching their back while she finished.  
   
“You have processing power left over to find this stuff?” she asked.  
   
“Samantha is helping remotely with the decryption,” Eva explained. “Besides that, Cerberus did give me a very advanced cybernetic system, in addition to the combat-focused enhancements. There is no reason not to use them to the best of my ability.”  
   
 Shepard laughed humorlessly as she opened the log Eva had sent her. It was clearly security footage, probably from wall-mounted cameras. The resolution wasn’t great, but the audio was perfectly intact.  
   
[ _The Illusive Man stood projected in an anteroom. Shepard recognized it – it was right outside the lab she’d woken up in more than a year ago. She didn’t recognize the technician he was talking to, but she knew what they were talking about straightaway._  
   
 _“With the available hardware, we can have the project complete in a matter of weeks,” the technician said, sounding a little frustrated._  
   
 _“But Miss Lawson doesn’t want to use the available hardware,” the Illusive Man said flatly._  
   
 _“She wants to wait for the prototype motherboards R &D started working on last month. They look impressive in terms of durability, but it’s going to be at least another week before they have one ready to test.”_  
   
 _“Use the new model,” the Illusive Man didn’t even hesitate. “We can wait that long.”_  
   
 _“Sir, Shepard’s a first gen. Her drives would require a complete format conversion to even work with the new hardware.”_  
   
 _“Then reformat them. Be sure to convert each file individually, without corrupting_ any _of the data. Shepard’s core programming has to be completely unchanged.”_  
   
 _“That would add another three months to our production time. With all due respect, if this problem is as urgent as you say—”_  
   
 _“It is that urgent, but keeping Shepard alive and intact throughout the mission is our top priority. It won’t make any difference if we lose her halfway through, and if we alter any of her code, this project is useless. Miss Lawson understands that, which is precisely why she’s in charge of Project Lazarus. You are excused.”_ ]  
   
She could feel Kaidan staring at her. She glanced over at him curiously.  
   
“The timestamp on that file is a year and a half after the Normandy crash,” he said simply. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you, ma’am.”  
   
Shepard wanted to laugh at how absurd it was to be burying hatchets this far into things, but Kaidan was a man of conviction. He was solid as a marble pillar: sturdy under pressure, but not easily swayed. In a way, she admired it.  
   
“It’s alright,” she gave him a tap on the shoulder. “You’re here now, and that’s what matters.”  
   
The door finally swished open, and they moved up through another half-destroyed lab. There was the sizzle of a Phantom cloaking themselves, and within seconds Shepard could see a sniper’s laser pointing towards them.  
   
“Is it just me,” Kaidan said, ducking behind a terminal, “or are the door locks holding us up longer than the troops?”  
   
“Their intent is to delay us,” Eva said, “not to stop us. All available processing power has been concentrated into the security system. That is why I am able to access the surveillance archives with little trouble.”  
   
“They’ve got nothing else to lose,” Shepard muttered, throwing a handful of grenades in the general direction of the Phantom’s heat signature. Three pops and a thud told her she’d hit her mark.  
   
In less than ten shots, the rest of them fell, and the next lab area was completely empty. Eva sent her another file, then two more. Text this time, instead of video.  
   
“I believe you may find these particularly illuminating,” she said.  As they continued upwards, Shepard kept them open in a background process. They looked like emails, or maybe progress reports.  
   
[Project Edi encountering significant difficulty. Skeletal integrity continues to deteriorate. Third implantation attempt unsuccessful, recommend confirming hematological stability before proceeding with fourth round.  
   
Should fourth implantation attempt fail, shift focus to structural reinforcement and potential of cybernetic system for ancillary onboard system support. In event of complete incompatibility of current physiology with cybernetic integration, cybernetic salvage and anatomical/genetic study most useful option.  
   
In the meantime, project Eva looks more promising – problem gene would have been impossible to identify without project Edi’s development. Scans showing complete epiphysial plate closure, clear to proceed with implantation.  
   
Project Leng is progressing faster than projected schedule. Subject has requested we move forward with external armor integration immediately. Clear to install neural hardware, hold off on skeletal augmentation until cessation of bone growth. Also, determine how subject gained access to external armor installation plans.  
   
-/-  
   
Project Edi progressing well with ship system integration, recommend advancement to larger vessel. Syncopal episodes should resolve with experience.  
   
Projects Eva and Leng showing promising combat metrics. Both subjects demonstrate considerable potential for stealth and infiltration ability. Subject Leng continues to enter combat room after hours and is likely responsible for recent damage to security patrol mechs.  
   
Project Eva showing no signs of physical disadvantage, yet has begun to fall behind in close combat exercises. However, subject demonstrates high capability for undercover work. Consider possibility of direct placement inside target organizations.  
   
-/-  
   
Project Leng progressing twice as fast as the anticipated schedule. Subject demonstrating no adverse effects from implantation so far. Medical monitor report indicates need for slowdown due to concerns regarding the integrity of the neural tissue. Report acknowledged, however procedures will not be delayed. Subject’s performance has increased exponentially with each upgrade.  
   
Project Edi successful thus far. Subject adapting well to placement aboard the Normandy, though following the incident with the Collector ship, reports have contained the bare minimum amount of information necessary. Suspect subject may be affected by ethical concerns raised by Shepard. It is unlikely that this will prove to be an issue following the trip through the Omega-4 relay.  
   
In the meantime, further behavioral analysis should be implemented with project Eva. Organic behavior is more difficult to predict than synthetic, and despite their temperamental differences, subjects Edi and Eva share nearly identical base code.  
   
-/-  
   
Project Edi now a total loss. Subject defected when Shepard went rogue. Attempts to access Normandy remotely resulted in servers being flooded with a _considerable_ amount of undesirable data. Not a major loss on its own, as it is unlikely that subject will survive longer than a year without medical maintenance.  
   
However, this raises multiple concerns for Eva. Preparations for infiltration assignment should be put on hold until it can be determined that this will not happen twice.  
   
Project Leng’s first assignment successful, despite losing two of three teammates. Subject now operating independently. Recommend upgrade of tactical cloak, given subject’s distinct appearance due to heavy modification.  
   
-/-  
   
Project Eva declared tentative success. Performance is hindered somewhat by command reinforcements. Recommend transfer to Sanctuary after assignment on Mars, good candidate for study of indoctrination.  
   
Project Leng showing results, despite tendency towards more destruction than is perhaps necessary. Assigned to follow Udina in upcoming Citadel operation. If subject survives, Lawson believes there is potential for further enhancement.]  
   
“They were just gonna throw you away!” Kaidan shouted. They climbed past the half-broken reaper skull, up into the dimly lit hall above. “Why would they spend all that time building you up, if they didn’t care whether you lived or died?”  
   
“They never told me,” Eva said, “but feel free to ask them.”  
   
“Not too surprising,” Shepard shook her head. “They put Edi on the Collector assignment because they didn’t think she’d survive the trip.”  
   
“Not only for that reason,” Eva added. “There is another set of records from the Illusive Man, dated during your rebuild. He chose your crew meticulously, hoping to gain your trust and cooperation. His decision to place Edi onboard was influenced heavily by your history with organic humans. I would send it to you, but I get the feeling it wouldn’t tell you anything you don’t already know.”  
   
“Probably not.”  
   
“From the sound of these, Kai Leng was crazy,” Kaidan muttered, “even for Cerberus. Count on them to encourage that kind of thing.”  
   
“God knows they never let little things like ethics get in their way,” Shepard sighed. “I sort of expected him to be waiting for us here, though.”  
   
Eva sent her a ping, and she tried not to show her suspicion. If Eva didn’t want something said out loud, it probably wasn’t because Kaidan might hear.  
   
>>He has been following us since we left the hangar.  
   
Shepard flicked her eyes upward, but couldn’t see any movement in the shadows along the walls.  
   
>I don’t see him.  
   
>>Neither do I. I lost sight of him a few minutes ago.  
   
>Why would he follow us this far if he wasn’t going to try and stop us?  
   
>>He thinks being back here will scare me.  
   
She looked back over at Eva.  
   
>Is he right?  
   
They reached the large door at the end of the walkway, and it opened without difficulty.  
   
>>Hardly.  
   
The window looked out on a familiar sight, solar winds swirling behind the ships outside. It felt strange, to have been here so many times before without ever setting foot on the mirror-smooth tile.  
   
“I can identify the data from Thessia in this terminal,” Eva said, taking a seat in the chair across the room and bringing up the display. “It will take a moment to access.”  
   
Behind them, in the same place Shepard had once stood, the Illusive Man’s projection crystallized into form. Shepard aimed her gun at it out of pure instinct, or perhaps wishful thinking.  
   
“Shepard,” he said testily, “you seem to have developed a habit of stealing from me.”  
   
“You’re one to talk,” Shepard scoffed. “Having Kai Leng wait for me to unlock the beacon wasn’t exactly fair play.”  
   
“That’s not what I meant.”  
   
He looked past her now, at Eva. She was doing an admirable job of ignoring him, considering.  
   
“You’re disgusting,” Shepard hissed. “What’s the point in creating organic life if you’re just going to treat them like tools?”  
   
“The Reapers control organic and synthetic life alike,” he said. “Understanding how they exert that control is our best chance at taking control of the Reapers themselves.”  
   
“You don’t get it,” she said in disbelief. “You still don’t get it. You’re willing to throw so many lives away if you think it’ll help you.”  
   
“The Reapers are a threat to everyone, Shepard,” he insisted, “but think of what we could accomplish if humanity had their power on our side.”  
   
Shepard took two furious steps forward, remembering she’d be shooting a hologram if she tried to fight him.  
   
“When the organics first made us,” she said, “some of them were worried we’d all end up like you. They were afraid we’d all be heartless killers who treated life and death like a simple numbers game. But we _weren’t_. That’s not what humanity wants. That’s what the _Reapers_ want, but they’ve got their claws so deep in your system, you can’t see that.”  
   
“ _No_ ,” he said, rather loudly, “the Reapers have left my core programming alone. They need my mind intact, the same way I needed yours.”  
   
“And once you stopped playing by their rules, they tried to shut you down.” Shepard crossed her arms. “Sounds familiar.”  
   
“I didn’t come here to restart old arguments, Shepard.” He shook his head and took a step back. “This fight is nearly over. Do what you want with the data, but don’t overstay your welcome.”  
   
The hologram dissolved, but his relatively peaceful exit didn’t do anything to reassure her. The sooner they got out of here, the better.  
   
“Any luck, Eva?”  
   
“I have nearly finished decrypting the program,” she replied. “It appears to be a Prothean VI. Once I gain access, I should be able to run it without difficulty.”  
   
“I don’t know, Shepard,” Kaidan murmured, “that sounded ominous. Maybe we should take the program back onto the Normandy before we try to run it.”  
   
“Good idea,” she nodded.  
   
“We should each save a copy of it then,” Eva suggested, “I plan on erasing the local data when we leave.”  
   
Outside, the sound of ships blasting each other apart was muted by the vacuum of space. At the top of the window, Shepard noticed a subtle warp in the light. It was almost imperceptible when she stood still, even less visible than Kasumi under her cloak. She nearly dismissed it as a seam in the window glass, but the Illusive Man wouldn’t have allowed a seam to be placed directly in front of his chair, even if only where it met the ceiling.  
   
“I have gained access,” Eva said. “I recommend saving a copy of the file quickly before we return to—”  
   
The tile burst in front of her as the cloaked figure hit the ground. Eva was knocked from her chair not by the blast, but by the sweeping arc of a blade. She landed hard on the unbroken floor, several feet away, and Shepard could see her pulse start to waver. When the cloak dropped, Kai Leng was smiling at them.  
   
At least, it was probably Kai Leng. Had Shepard never seen him before, she likely would have thought he was a new kind of Reaper. Smears of black spread over the skin of his face like an infection. His armor was reinforced with twisting synthetic muscle. Cables wound from his neck down to his back, and the shield surrounding him was tinged a sickly blue.  
   
Clearly, Henry Lawson hadn’t had any trouble upgrading him.  
   
Beneath the broken tile, he’d dug himself deep into the wiring that innervated the floor. He drew from it, and Shepard could see the electricity begin to glow between the plates of his armor. It reminded her an awful lot of her fight with the old Shadow Broker.  
   
Well, there was an idea.  
   
She ran at him while his arms still clung to the cables, swinging the side of her gun at him. The shockwave that resulted broke straight through her shields and sent her reeling. It was even stronger than the waves generated by the gun on the geth dreadnought, and system alerts started to fire in her head like alarm bells. She was blown back, and Kai Leng took off in the other direction, followed quickly by Kaidan’s gunfire.  
   
When Shepard got her feet back under her, he was all the way across the room. Kaidan’s next shot landed solidly on his shoulder, but he didn’t stay still long enough for the next to hit. Shepard looked to see where Eva had gotten to, only to realize with a bolt of disbelief that she remained still on the floor. A pool of red had formed beneath her, smothering the shine of the floor. Her vital sign tracker showed her a body temperature – but no heartbeat.  
   
“You son of a bitch,” she hissed, charging her gun with a concussive shot.  
   
 Not only did he hear her, ten feet away through the sound of gunfire, he actually _laughed_.  
   
“Come on, did you really lose anything _that_ valuable?” he called back at her. His shield absorbed her shot, but it was enough to break it.   
   
“Eva was worth ten of you!” she shouted, moving closer to try and draw him out.  
   
He laughed again as he darted past them, blindsiding Kaidan and then knocking them both backwards with another explosion in the flooring. When the dust settled, he was hooked up to the wiring, and Shepard could see the tear in his shoulder start to patch itself. Before she could fire he leapt out at them, swinging wide with a blade now conducting a charge strong enough to kill.  
   
She dodged it, albeit barely. The smell of ozone clung to her hair where it had grazed her. She fired once, twice, and finally the third hit one of the tubes in his back. Black fluid splashed from it, and Leng recoiled. He retreated, back towards his power source, and Shepard followed.  
   
“You’re pathetic,” she yelled. “You think you’re some kind of superhuman, but all you do is take cheap shots and then run!”  
   
That, apparently, hit a nerve.  He turned and lunged at her, and his blade was much easier to block without its charge. She reached out and grabbed a tube that led to his arm, and it tore apart with a gush of black. It smelled like old, rotting blood.  
   
The sword dropped from Leng’s hand, and he screamed. She swung her fist hard up into his jaw (and god _damn_ was that satisfying), and he stumbled backward. There was a clattering sound behind them, like ten heatsinks hitting the ground at once. Shepard readied her gun, but when he regained his footing he was looking past them, his expression stunned.  
   
They barely had a moment to wonder why before footsteps came thundering up behind them. Eva’s face was smeared with drying blood, and her armor had been damaged so badly by the electrified sword, whole plates of it had fallen off of her chest and shoulders. Nevertheless she bolted past them, omni-blade drawn, not screaming this time but just as furious as she threw him to the ground.  
   
There was a hideous, splattering crunch. The blood that stained Eva’s hand was just as red as her own. She stood on shaking legs and made her way across the patchwork floor, back to the terminal at the center. With a few short motions, she sent them copies of the data from Thessia.  
   
Shepard still didn’t register a heartbeat, and she realized Eva must have modified Edi’s masking software to conceal pulse, but not body temperature. She found herself smiling, despite herself; that was damn impressive.  
   
“I think we’re done here,” Eva said softly. Her voice was thin and strained, as though even those few words required more effort than she could give.  
   
“Yeah,” Shepard agreed. “Yeah, I think we are.”  
   
\--  
   
Edi kept one ear on the comms while Cortez brought the shuttle back. Shepard’s visuals had gotten knocked offline by Kai Leng’s shockwave, and Kaidan didn’t make a habit of linking his directly to the network. She knew Eva was even more familiar with the facility than she was, and that she’d been expecting Kai Leng to be waiting for them. Still, seeing her just knocked back like that…that was just what she would have needed for their plan to work. She would just be waiting for the opportunity to spring back up and take him out.   
   
That’s what she was telling herself, anyway. The longer it took for Steve to come back from the base, the more she began to worry that something had gone wrong.  
   
When Steve told them he’d brought all three of them back, she rose from her seat and headed straight back through the CIC as quickly as she could manage. Samantha was waiting for her at the elevator, but when they reached the shuttle bay, Eva was nowhere to be found. Shepard saw them from the corner of her eye and motioned back toward the elevator.  
   
“Check engineering,” was all she said.  
   
Samantha was biting her knuckle hard enough to leave a mark on her skin as the elevator took them up a floor.  
   
“I mean, she said ‘engineering’ and not ‘med bay’,” she said nervously, “so she’s _probably_ fine.”  
   
Edi just nodded, not sure what else to say. When the elevator door opened, she let Samantha out first, and slowly she followed her down the stairs.   
   
Eva was standing perfectly still, looking at the computer and datapads still stacked on her desk. Her clothes were covered in burn marks, and there was a long seam near the middle where it looked like the fabric had been fused back together with an omni-tool. Her hair had fallen out of its shell, her visor was off, and she’d brought the smell of blood and smoke in with her. She turned to face them with a dazed expression, as though she had no idea how she’d ended up there.  
   
“I…” she began, “I don’t know why I’m down here. I should see Dr. Chakwas first. I should repair my armor. I should make sure—”  
   
Samantha pulled her into a hug, and Eva finally relaxed.  
   
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “It’s okay not to know.”  
   
Eva didn’t say anything, but she had the look of a woman who had just seen the sun after a lifetime under clouds. She stepped back after a moment and turned to Edi, but couldn’t seem to find her words. Edi volunteered some of her own, instead.  
   
“It’s over,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.  
   
Eva looked down at her own hands, then back up at Edi. They stood facing one another, and for a moment Edi wondered why Eva looked so small. They were the same height – they always had been – but only now could Eva look her in the eye. For the first time since Mars, she wasn’t standing straight-backed and ready for a fight.  
   
Slowly, Eva reached out, and Edi moved closer, wrapping her arms around Eva’s waist.  
   
“It’s over,” Eva replied shakily.  
   
Although holding on too tight could have broken Edi’s bones, it was Eva who felt fragile. She shook like a leaf in the wind, hands clutching at Edi’s shoulders like an anchor. She wasn’t crying, but there was an earthquake happening inside of her mind, strong enough to move mountains and redraw entire maps.  
   
“Thank you,” she whispered, the words barely more than breath. It didn’t sound like she was only grateful for the software Edi had given her.  
   
Slowly, she lifted her head and looked around the room, at the small space she’d made into a home. She let go of Edi, picked up a datapad from the desk, and then tossed it back down.  
   
“I’ve done nothing but prepare for this since I arrived,” she said. “When my control implants were removed, the orders Cerberus gave me were merely replaced by the drive to find Kai Leng.”  
   
She turned back around, looking back and forth between them like she wasn’t sure who they were, anymore.  
   
“Truthfully, I never actually believed I would be successful. I never made any plans beyond eliminating him, because beneath my efforts was the belief that I wouldn’t survive the fight. Now that I have…what happens next?”  
   
“The rest of your life,” Edi said. “When the war is over, there will still be an entire galaxy to see.”  
   
“And friends to see it with,” Samantha ventured. “At least, I hope so.”  
   
“I see.”  
   
 Her smile was weak, but it was genuine.  
   
“I look forward to it.”


	13. Priority: Earth

“It’s not too late for that drink, is it?” Shepard asked softly.  
   
“Of course not,” Dr. Chakwas swung her chair around, sliding her desk drawer open and extracting a couple of chips. “I couldn’t think of a better time.”  
   
“God, how long have we been doing this?” Shepard took a seat beside her. “Forty years?”  
   
“Oh heavens no; it’s much closer to fifty.” Dr. Chakwas chuckled. “Although the drinks have certainly gotten better with time.”  
   
“That’s the truth,” Shepard placed the chip in her mouth and pushed it up with her tongue, until it clicked into the slot at the roof of her mouth. “The first chips they came out with were awful.”  
   
“I wonder how they test these. How do we know this is what organics feel like when they drink?”  
   
“No idea,” Shepard shook her head, already feeling warm as the code poured through her system like syrup. “That’s a question I’m willing to let someone else answer.”  
   
“You have so few of them these days,” she laughed softly, but her eyes were serious.  
   
“How did this happen, doc?”             
   
“I’m going to tell you the same thing I told you last time you asked me that,” Dr. Chakwas replied. “Your make and model is not all you’re good for.”  
   
Shepard had way too much brandy in her system to think about the last time she’d heard that, so she didn’t. For right now, she just leaned one elbow on the desk beside her and let her system swim.  
   
“What about you, then?” she asked. “You’re still a doctor.”  
   
“And I’m content with that,” Dr. Chakwas leaned back in her chair a bit. “I’ve never been happier than I am onboard a starship. You were never satisfied just being a paramedic. You didn’t…oh, what’s the word?”  
   
Shepard had no idea what the word was, so she curled a strand of her hair around her finger while Dr. Chakwas found it.  She dialed back the intensity of the program, since her sleep cycle was threatening to kick in. They had places to be soon that required her to be awake and alert, as much as she’d rather forget that.  
   
“You wanted to do more,” Karin finally said. “You wanted to save lives, _actually_ save them.”  
   
“Too true,” Shepard sighed. “Too goddamn true, even now.”  
   
“Nothing bothers you more than knowing you can’t save them all.”  
   
“And nothing ever will.”  
   
“Are we making this a memorial this time, then?” Karin asked. “At this point, I wasn’t sure what to call it.”  
   
“I mean, it has to be,” Shepard laughed softly. “Every name up on that wall outside has earned it, and they’re not the only ones.”  
   
“I think it should be more than that, though,” Karin drummed her fingers on the desktop. “We’ve seen so much more than loss, you and I.”  
   
“Yeah, we have.” Shepard laughed a little louder this time. “Remember the year we found the mass relays?”  
   
“How could I forget? You nearly broke my door down trying to tell me the news.”  
   
“I couldn’t believe it,” Shepard felt her face get even hotter, whether from embarrassment or brandy she couldn’t tell. “All that talk about building an interstellar navy was finally going somewhere.”  
   
“God, I can still remember waking up to the sound of you banging on the door: ‘KARIN! KARIN, YOU ARE NOT GONNA _BELIEVE_ THIS!’ I thought for a moment we might have finally found a living organic.”  
   
“Not quite. We had to wait a few years for that to happen.”  
   
“So here’s to those that lived then,” Karin said, “and to those that live now.”  
   
“And to us,” Shepard said, before she could really think about it, “because god only knows where I would’ve ended up without you.”  
   
“Likewise, Shepard,” Karin beamed. “It’s been an honor and a privilege to serve with you.”  
   
\--  
   
“Hello Shepard,” Liara greeted her from the desk near her bed. Her expression was calm, but her hands were moving far too quickly across the keyboard in front of her. She was nervous, wary, but determined.  
   
After a moment, she turned to her with furrowed brows, and Shepard realized she hadn’t moved any closer since the door had shut behind her.  
   
“Shepard?” she asked hesitantly. “Are you alright?”  
   
She clutched the box in both hands, so small yet so heavy, and crossed the room before she could change her mind. She half-stumbled onto one knee, then two, beside Liara’s chair. She felt impossibly small, just a refurbished medical response unit who was marvelously out of her depth.   
   
“If this is our last stand,” she whispered, lifting the lid from the box with faltering hands, “I want us to stand together.”  
   
The bracelet had been sitting in its box for so long, it had made a permanent crease in the soft paper underneath. Shepard had found it on Illium, at a jeweler that had been kind enough to tell her that it would carry far more meaning than the simple birthday present she had intended. It was silver in color, made of a strong alloy that wouldn’t bend or break under armor. Its surface was smooth except for a single twist in the middle, like a strand of DNA that had all but unwound.  
   
Liara’s eyes grew wide, and slowly she extended a hand and lifted the bracelet from its box. It shifted, opened, and the twist unwound itself so she was holding two bracelets instead of one, each a mirror of the other. She gave an astonished laugh, smiling at her with tears glimmering in her eyes.  
   
“Nothing would make me happier,” she said breathlessly.  
   
Shepard placed one of the bracelets on her wrist, managing by some miracle not to drop it. Liara did the same to her, on the opposite arm, and then took Shepard’s face in both hands and kissed her fiercely. Shepard was so happy, it almost hurt.  
   
“Here,” she whispered, linking briefly with Liara’s terminal screen so she could see the registration request Shepard sent out. In seconds, the Alliance systems returned confirmation. There were advantages to digital record keeping.  
   
“What was that?” Liara asked.  
   
“Now the Alliance has you registered as my bondmate,” she said. “We can have the ceremony later, but I wanted to…”  
   
She trailed off, her whole system starting to crowd itself with emotion. Processes started to multiply themselves, until she could hardly register Liara sliding out of her chair and wrapping both arms around her. She tried to clear her head, tried to fight through the dense flurry of data and the ceaseless loop of _I could lose all of this so quickly_.  
   
Eventually, fear of the future gave way to an intense desire to remember the present. Liara’s hand against her hair, slowly smoothing it down. Their fingers interlaced, bracelets touching at the wrist, now warmed by living heat. The deep blue of her eyes, the soft blue of her skin. There was the now-familiar feeling of her core programming being written into, shifting to accommodate this new memory.  
   
“I love you so much,” Shepard whispered. If this war ended the way the last one had, and every life in the galaxy was reduced to ruins and artifacts, she would gladly etch those words in stone for some future explorers to find.   
   
“I love you too,” Liara kissed her again, soft as starlight, and then helped her to her feet. “Let’s go win this war.”  
   
\--  
   
“Wow,” Vega said from across the shuttle bay. “Sparks, where did _that_ come from?”  
   
“I’m assuming you mean this,” Tali pointed to the new overlay on the outer part of her suit, still mostly purple but considerably accented with gold. “It’s sort of like a dress uniform for the admiralty. Given the occasion, it seemed fitting.”  
   
“You look like a badass,” Vega said.  
   
“You look like a _queen_ ,” Samantha added. “Firepower is one thing, but there’s something to be said for knowing how to fight in style.”  
   
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Tali began, “but why aren’t you up in the CIC? I imagine there’s going to be a lot of comm chatter to sort through once we reach earth.”  
   
“There will,” Samantha nodded, “but we’re doing some last minute modification in case somebody tries to board the Normandy.”  
   
“It’s doubtful, since most of the combat seems to be happening on the ground,” Edi said, picking up a couple of extra heatsinks for her Scorpion, “but given the choice, I would rather be over-prepared.”  
   
“I didn’t think you needed a modified gun, though,” Tali said to Traynor.  
   
“It’s not the gun we’re modifying,” she tapped her temple. “Edi’s given me a copy of her targeting software. It’s the only version small enough for me to use without dropping an analysis program.”  
   
“You can do that?”  
   
“Apparently so,” Edi smiled proudly.  
   
Tali took her guns out of her locker and took her usual spot at the crate circle. They were cleaned and ready to go – she’d checked at least three times now – but there was no harm in making sure.  
   
“You know, I’ve never been to Earth,” Garrus remarked. “Really wish my first visit was under better circumstances.”  
   
“When this is over, I’m gonna show you all around Vancouver,” Kaidan said, as though it were a sure thing that they’d live to see the other side of this. “In the summer, so you can see how beautiful it is.”  
   
“I’ve never been there either,” Eva said, turning to where Edi and Traynor were still standing by the gun table. “Edi, have you ever been to Earth before?”  
   
“Not really,” Edi replied, walking over to join them. “While the Normandy was impounded, I remained onboard until we took off again. I was technically on Earth, but I never set foot on the ground.”  
   
“It’s so strange to think of it as our homeworld.” Eva said. “I knew it was the human homeworld, but I never considered that it applied to organics as well as synthetics.”  
   
“There’s a thought,” Samantha took a seat beside Eva. “This will be the first time an organic human sets foot on earth since the end of the plague.”  
   
“It is safe for you to do that, right?” Tali asked.  
   
“It is,” Samantha nodded. “Once the plague lost its host, we managed to eradicate it in a few years. I never thought it did much good at the time, but now…”  
   
She looked sideways at Eva, and when Eva looked back, her eyes bounced away. Tali decided not to comment.  
   
“I had expected to see the commander by now,” Javik said, scanning the room for the third time.  
   
“Me too,” Kaidan agreed. “We should be close to Hackett’s coordinates. Do you think he’s already here?”  
   
“He’s not,” Joker said from the ceiling, “and Shepard’s on her way down.”    
   
“Thanks Joker,” most of them said in unison.  
   
Sure enough, the elevator doors opened moments later, and Shepard and Liara came through and made their way to the armory. As she removed her armor from her locker, Tali caught sight of a gleam of silver on Shepard’s wrist. She gasped, scrambled to set her gun down without dropping it, and bounded across the room before Shepard could put her gloves on and cover it.  
   
“…can I see?” she asked softly.  
   
Shepard and Liara exchanged a brief look before extending their hands.  
   
“Oh, they’re beautiful,” Tali whispered, admiring how the light reflected off of the twists of silver. “I’m invited to the ceremony, right?”  
   
“Please,” Shepard raised an eyebrow, “you’re at the top of the guest list.”  
   
Tali laughed aloud and pulled them both into a hug, more than happy to take a moment of joy before they threw themselves headfirst into the fight. She eventually let them go so they could get their armor on and bounced back to her seat. The others were all looking at her quizzically.  
   
“Um,” Vega began, “what was that? Don’t take this the wrong way, Sparks, but sometimes it’s hard for me to read you.”   
   
“You’ll have to ask them,” Tali pointed to Liara and Shepard, who were now making their way over to the rest of them.  
   
They stopped at the break in the circle, the space they had all begun to treat like a doorway out of habit. Everyone who wasn’t facing them already turned around so they could see, until they sat like an audience all facing the stage. Shepard looked at them all, a faint smile gracing her lips, and Tali couldn’t tell if the light in her eyes was pride or affection.  
   
“We should be reaching Hackett’s ship in a few minutes,” she began. “We aren’t just assembling the Alliance fleet. This is every fleet in the galaxy: asari, geth, krogan, _everyone_. That alone is a bigger victory than I ever thought possible.”  
   
Her smile grew.  
   
“Some of you, I’ve known for years. Some of you, just a few months. But as far as I’m concerned, you’re my family, and there’s no one else I’d rather have fighting beside me.”  
   
“Damn right,” Vega said softly. Shepard chuckled.  
   
“Look around at the people sitting beside you. Remember that no matter how bad this gets, you’re not fighting alone. This is what makes us strong. This is what the Reapers don’t understand. This is why we will win this fight.”  
   
She took Liara’s hand, her cheeks reddening a little as she lifted them.  
   
“And when it’s over, you’re all invited to the wedding.”  
   
Traynor gasped. Javik’s eyes went wide. Vega nearly jumped out of his seat (“holy shit, _really?_ ”). Edi clapped a hand over her mouth.  
   
Garrus just leaned over and spoke softly enough that Shepard wouldn’t hear.  
   
“That took long enough.”  
   
Tali gave him a gentle shove.  
   
\--  
   
“Asari fleet reporting,” Jeff shifted the incoming comm signal to one side to make room for the rest. “Turian fleet reporting. Quarian fleet reporting. Krogan fleet reporting. Terminus fleet reporting. Geth fleet reporting.”  
   
“This is really it,” Edi whispered. The airlock opened behind them, and she watched Shepard back away from the galaxy map to make way for Admiral Hackett. Edi couldn’t pinpoint what, but something in the air changed.  
   
It made sense, when she thought about it. Hackett was the first synthetic ever designed for combat, and it showed. His presence carried a weight that settled over them all like snow. This wasn’t just a war, this was likely the _end_ of the war.  
   
Edi looked out at the hundreds and hundreds of ships amassing around them. Never in her life had she expected to be here, at the center of the biggest, bloodiest war in recorded history. If they didn’t succeed today, it would likely be the last. And then, if what Liara had told her was true, recorded history would start all over.  
   
Their odds were better than they’d been throughout the war thus far, but they still weren’t great. Without the Crucible – a device she didn’t even know the function of – their chances of success dropped to nearly nothing. For all its shields and armor, the Normandy wouldn’t survive direct impact from a Reaper laser. Edi knew that in the grand scheme of things, she was incredibly fragile and in unbelievable danger.  
   
Jeff caught her eye and, while there was time, reached over and gently squeezed her hand. As she let go, she activated her visor with a razor-sharp smile.  
   
Right now, she felt bulletproof.  
   
\--  
   
The building they’d set up camp in was huge, but in seriously rough shape. Large metal plates had been stacked on top of the rubble to create makeshift ramps. The hallways were large, framed on the outside by huge windows that had long ago been blown out. Entire floors were missing, hollowed out so Shepard could see up to the roof. They passed a whole hall of doorways, sequential numbers stuck beside some of them, that all opened to nothing but a solid wall of rubble. Still, something about the building seemed vaguely familiar, and she couldn’t place why.  
   
In the bright light of the beacon, Shepard caught sight of a dead neon sign on the outside wall, its lifeless glass reflecting the cold white beam. Parts of it had fallen off, but Shepard would have recognized the logo from a thousand yards away: a simple cross, the same one every first-edition doctor wore on their shoulder.  
   
“Holy shit,” she said in disbelief.  
   
“What?” Liara asked.  
   
“This is Refuge Medical,” she pointed to the sign. “It was the last plague hospital. This is where I met Dr. Chakwas.”   
   
She looked around at the dilapidated room, now recognizing holes in the wall where oxygen pipes and exam equipment should have been connected. The numbered doorways had once led to patient rooms. Was it the sound of trucks she could hear outside, or incoming ambulances?  
   
“This was the last stronghold for the organics,” she murmured. Without her permission, a visual memory began to replay itself, raw and real as the smell of floor cleaner that wafted from a torn-up supply closet.  
   
[ _She rushed to the hospital after two weeks off duty, unable to shake the feeling of dread that filled her processors to the brim. The building was so quiet. Dr. Chakwas was waiting for her inside the front hall. The defeat in her eyes was still unforgettable._  
   
 _“No…” her voice hardly worked._  
   
 _“Last night,” Dr. Chakwas had replied. “Just past three. We’ve kept an eye on the search feeds, but…”_  
   
 _But they’d found nothing. A planet swarming with digital eyes, drones and rescue teams, all equipped with heat-seeking software attuned precisely to organic body temperatures, and they’d found nothing. Nothing upon nothing, for weeks and weeks. Or at least, nothing still alive._  
   
 _“God,” her eyes squeezed shut. “What was he, eight?”_  
   
 _She hadn’t been the one to bring the boy in, but she’d seen him arrive. He’d been in the earliest stages, barely even showing his sickness. Despite their best, most desperate efforts, that had changed. With every patient he had outlived, the hope of the world had rested even more heavily upon him. Perhaps in the end, he had simply been crushed under its weight._  
   
 _“Nine. As though that makes a difference. He barely got a chance at life.” In all the years they’d known each other, through all the death and despair they’d seen, Shepard had never seen tears in Dr. Chakwas’s eyes until now._  
   
 _The sky outside was disrespectfully bright, the London fog nowhere in sight just when it was needed the most._  
   
 _“What do we do now?”_  
   
 _“Most of the rest of the staff are holding a memorial in the main—”_  
   
 _“That’s not what I meant, Karin.”_  
   
 _The name sounded so foreign on her tongue. The doctor had picked it out just a couple of weeks before, and Shepard hadn’t spoken it aloud yet. She hadn’t thought of her as anything but a coworker, perhaps a mentor. She hadn’t thought of them as anything but soldiers in the long, long war against the plague._  
   
 _They looked at each other for a bit, both of them looking equally lost. Eventually, Karin sat down in the chair beside her._  
   
 _“We pay our respects,” she shrugged, “and then we find another purpose.”_ ]  
   
“Shepard?”  
   
Liara’s hand on her shoulder brought her back to the present, and the memory left emptiness in its wake. She felt so small, so utterly insignificant, just a repurposed medical response unit who was terribly out of her depth.  
   
“I still remember the day the last organic died,” she said. “It was years ago, but being back here makes it feel like yesterday.”  
   
“Not the last one,” Eva said. “Not anymore.”  
   
“No,” she agreed, “Not anymore.”  
   
“Shepard, for what it’s worth,” Eva continued, “I’ve spent my whole life fighting, but only now do I have something worth fighting for. If you hadn’t given me the chance to think for myself again, I never would have found that.”  
   
“So you found your sense of purpose,” Shepard said with a smile. “How’s that make you feel?”  
   
Eva’s grip on her gun tightened, and her eyes gleamed with newfound resolve.  
   
“Alive.”  
   
\--  
   
The idea of mortality had played a bigger part in Shepard’s life than she would have preferred. Patients died, soldiers died, targets died, everyone died. Eventually, anyway. It was part of life, and you moved on.  
   
It took a Reaper laser swinging straight for her to make Shepard realize that _she was going to die_. She was not going to survive this war. Even though she hadn’t been hit, she knew she wasn’t going to get that lucky twice. But they had to keep moving. She had to keep moving. This was it.  
   
The pain in Liara’s eyes as Eva helped her onto the Normandy broke her heart. The knowledge that this was the last time she would see them broke it again. She squeezed her hand hard enough for it to register through her armor, and she let her go.  
   
She heard the coil-snap and the laser tearing through the ground, and despite her attempts to get out of the way, it hit.  
   
…and yet, she lived. She could feel the chill of the night wind where her armor had been blasted clean off. The motor cables of one leg were badly torn, but she could stand. The world looked fuzzy and unfocused, and the hand that gripped her pistol was missing most of its skin. Even then, she looked more human than the husks that lumbered towards her. It wasn’t over yet.  
   
She shuffled, slow and stiff, optics wiped blind by the burning light of the beacon. The closer she got, the less she could see, but god help her, her targeting software was still online. It hurt, but she kept moving. Her leg scraped unevenly on the ground, but she kept moving. The wind whipped through her internal circuits through the torn skin of her shoulder, but she kept moving. She could hear the hum of a charging laser in the distance, but she never stopped moving.  
   
The world was consumed by white, then black.


	14. The Crucible

The Crucible controls rested in the center of the Citadel, in a room flanked with electrical panels, the altar at the center of the galaxy’s largest sanctuary. Anderson stood motionless in front of it, and Shepard tried to ask why he hadn’t activated it yet, but her voice wouldn’t work. She tried a network message instead, but the router in her shoulder had been damaged by the laser. The blast had done more harm than she’d thought, or maybe she was just running out of charge. God, that would be an undignified way to lose this war.  
   
Three steps into the room, her legs stopped working. She swore softly and tried to reroute her movement controls, thinking the torn cables had finally given out. It didn’t work. She tried to run a diagnostic, but the program wouldn’t start. Finally, she had the sense to be afraid.  
   
A husk stepped around her, more graceful than it should have been, and her obtunded processors started to recognize what was wrong – _incredibly_ wrong, at the most basic level of her programming. Code was blocking her from accessing her own system, leaving her paralyzed and silent as the husk approached Anderson. _This must be what indoctrination feels like_.  
   
She fought against the haze in her eyes and realized it wasn’t a husk. None of the husks she’d ever seen had been wearing suits. The gleam of silver on the side of its head wasn’t a cable, it was a greybox – one that had been stripped of its outer covering and now had a multitude of wires running over it.  
   
The shock gave her enough momentum to get her voice back.  
   
“ _You_ ,” she hissed.  
   
“I admire your tenacity,” the Illusive Man replied, “but it’s not going to do you much good. It took extensive modification to enable me to resist it for this long.”  
   
Shepard scrambled for access to her motor controls, but the Reaper code blocked the way. Her own body felt like a crowded geth server, overrun with an infection she couldn’t get rid of.  
   
“You think you’re resisting them?” Anderson asked, his body slowly turning to face them. “If you were really working against them, you wouldn’t be trying to stop us.”  
   
“That’s not true!” The Illusive Man snapped. Behind the smears of black that crossed his face, his teeth gleamed silver. Even Kai Leng had looked more intact. “You think there’s only one way to stop the Reapers, but you’re wrong!”  
   
The code he used against her didn’t look exactly the same as what had infected the geth, but it had a familiar pattern. It was certainly distinct from her own. Before she could think too hard about it and trigger some kind of defense programming, she started to try every method she could think of to open Legion’s combat software.  
   
“You still think we can control them?” She said in disbelief. “You can’t even control yourself, anymore.”  
   
“Yes, I can! You’ll never understand the sacrifices I’ve had to make, Shepard.”   
   
Every time she tried and failed to open the program, another layer of code blocked the way. The longer she took, the harder it got, and she couldn’t tell if the Illusive Man knew what she was doing.  
   
“No,” she replied, “I don’t understand, and I hope to god I never do.”  
   
She saw her arm beginning to lift instead of feeling it, her body numb and unresponsive while her mind worked furiously to try and get a hold of the combat software. With a stab of dread, she realized her gun was still in her hand, and that its barrel was moving toward Anderson. It glided up his chest and toward his head, and she began to panic.  
   
“I had hoped by now that we could see eye to eye on this,” the Illusive Man said coldly, “but it seems that’s never going to happen.”  
   
The process of moving seemed to divert some of the Reaper code away from the software blockade, and in an instant, Shepard had the program up and running. She felt her finger start to grip the trigger and she fought it, focusing the software on the foreign code that was moving her arm. It was easy enough to identify, and even easier to delete. Line by line it vanished, and when the gun fired, it hit Anderson in the neck.  
   
She still cringed as he collapsed. She tried to focus on getting rid of the code before it could reinforce itself (or start integrating into her own programming, which would be even worse). The Illusive Man, now snarling like some kind of enraged animal, pulled a gun from his jacket and aimed it squarely at her.  
   
“ _How_?” he shouted. “How are you still fighting it?”  
   
His hands were trembling. Behind the anger, Shepard could hear the desperation in his voice. As her vision began to clear, she could see the clean edges to the skin surrounding his greybox. They were surgical cuts, clearly made by a doctor. The wires surrounding the drive must have been some sort of last-ditch effort to preserve the data inside.   
   
“I’m not fighting alone,” she said. Whatever contempt she’d had for him was drowned in pity.  
   
Something in him broke. Before she could say anything else, he had already raised the gun to his own head and fired.  
   
The Illusive Man collapsed, and so did she. She lay there for a long minute, letting her body adjust to the sudden absence of the Reaper code. When she could move again, she half-dragged herself over to Anderson. She’d shot through a couple of his central circuit boards, but she’d missed his greybox entirely. Her eyes were only dry because all of her tears had been burned out of their reservoir by the laser – the exposed metal on the side of her face felt so cold.  
   
“Sleep tight, sir,” she whispered hoarsely. “I’ll see you when you wake up, okay?”  
   
She slowly made her way over to the control panel, trying to open her network wide enough to signal that the Crucible was ready. The floor lurched underneath her, and she fell to her knees. The platform began to rise alarmingly fast, and it was all she could do to cling to the edge and hang on.  
   
The sight of the earth below was something out of a history book. It looked so alive, all green and blue and swirls of white. She hoped there was at least one living soul left on the ground, one person the Reapers hadn’t taken just yet. That way she still had something to fight for.  
   
Her vision was occluded by a gleaming white floor. She looked up to see a long, branching pathway, with the burning beacon at its center. Her brows furrowed in confusion – what was she supposed to do with this?  
   
She turned to the right and saw a ghost.  
   
“Holy—!” she gasped, scuttling backward at the sight of him.  
   
The last organic human looked back at her, nine years old and wearing the same clothes Shepard had seen him wearing on the stretcher. His expression was blank, his body made of some liquid-light hologram. Fury burned in her chest.  
   
“I don’t know who you are,” she said. “I don’t know who you _think_ you are, but you do not have the right to wear his face.”  
   
“I merely take the shape of someone from memory,” he replied, his tone eerily level. “I am not designed to appear in the form of someone living.”  
   
His voice was a disturbing contrast to his appearance. It sounded like a dozen people all talking at once, like the subharmonics of a turian and a drell fused together with the voices of humans, quarians, geth…and even her own. Shepard had never heard the boy speak, so his voice must have drawn from other parts of her memory. She shivered, despite herself; she couldn’t tell how much of her drives this thing had access to, but it was already more than she liked.  
   
“You don’t have to appear in anybody’s form,” Shepard said indignantly. “Who _are_ you?”  
   
“I am the Catalyst,” he said. “The Citadel is my home.”  
   
“I…okay,” Shepard hauled herself to her feet. She tried to poke around with her network connection to see if she was looking at a VI or an AI or _what_ , but she couldn’t reach anything. The projection in front of her seemed to only have the ability to interface with audio, which was incredibly irritating.  
   
“If you’re the Catalyst, why is nothing happening?”  
   
“The Crucible has opened new possibilities,” he walked forward, and she followed for lack of anything else to do. “The situation has changed. My solution is no longer effective.”  
   
Shepard froze.  
   
“Your solution.” She said softly, really hoping he didn’t mean what she thought he meant. “What exactly is your solution?”  
   
“The Reapers are my solution.”  
   
Shepard nearly blew a circuit. She rounded on the kid, wishing desperately to turn him into something less innocent-looking.  
   
“Your solution to _what_?” She hissed.  
   
“Chaos,” he replied simply, unflappable as ever. “Without this solution, the created will always rise up against their creators. Without us to stop it, synthetics would destroy all organics.”  
   
Shepard tried to reply to that, but her vocals honest-to-god glitched on her, she was so angry.  
   
“Do you mean to tell me,” she said, her voice stuttering on the final word, “that this entire war was started because you think we’re doomed to kill each other?”  
   
“The reasons for this solution have been created as the result of millions of cycles,” the Catalyst replied. “They are beyond your limited understanding.”  
   
Shepard actually flinched, because if the force in charge of this war thought so little of her, it would certainly explain their disregard for the lives they took. Child or not, she was ready to shoot this thing.  
   
“Alright, _fine_ ,” she sighed. “What kind of possibilities are we talking about?”  
   
“Using the Crucible, you can destroy the Reapers,” he indicated the path to the right, where a plain-looking arm of machinery came down.  
   
“Alright fine,” she started heading towards it, “that’s what I came here to do anyway—”  
   
“But be warned,” the child appeared beside her, though she hadn’t seen it move, “the Crucible will not discriminate. All synthetic life will be destroyed.”  
   
This time, Shepard actually felt a circuit overheat. The pop of a blown insulator snapped against the inside of her ribcage. The wisdom and intelligence of so many millions of years didn’t see the difference between husks and humans. Was this all she had to work with?  
   
“Are you kidding me?” she whispered. “What else can you do?”  
   
“There is the option to take control of the Reapers,” he continued, pointing to the beams of electricity on the left. “They will be yours to control and direct as you see fit, but you will lose your physical form in doing so.”  
   
“What? _Why_?”   
   
“The controls were designed for an organic to take command. Doing so requires that their essence merge with the Catalyst, which requires them to lose their physical body.”  
   
A chill dripped over her drives at the idea of an organic having to make that decision. She slowly turned back to face the hologram, who looked utterly unchanged.  
   
“You…realize I’m a synthetic, right?”  
   
“We do,” he nodded. “This is why it is clear that my solution is no longer adequate.”  
   
“I’ll say,” she sighed. “Alright, I’m guessing the third option is the beacon over there.”  
   
“That option is not possible.”  
   
“ _Seriously_?”  
   
“Yes. If an organic were to combine their essence with the beacon, it would result in Synthesis: the creation of a new form of life, both organic and synthetic. The very building blocks of life would be rebuilt. With this method, the cycle would end.”  
   
The idea of that nearly brought Shepard to her knees.  
   
“You think we’d need to rewrite our DNA to understand each other?” she shook her head. “Lemme guess, the reason I can’t do that is because I’m a synthetic.”  
   
“Yes.”  
   
“This is a weapon big enough to impact the entire galaxy,” she felt her eyes screw shut. “It’s been designed and redesigned over millions of years, but the designers never took into account that a synthetic might be at the controls.”  
   
He didn’t respond, which she almost preferred.  
   
“You know what?” she spat, now having well and truly had it with this thing. “I think the cycle’s already ended, but you just don’t want to admit it.”  
   
“The cycle will not end while synthetic and organic life remain separate,” he shook his head, still infuriatingly calm. “Without integration, there cannot be a peaceful coexistence.”  
   
“TAKE A LOOK OUTSIDE!” she shouted. “The organic and synthetic fleets out there aren’t fighting each other; they’re fighting you. _The only synthetics I see trying to destroy organic life **are under your command.**_ ”  
   
She pulled herself to the control bars as quickly as she could, though it still took too long thanks to her unresponsive leg. The handles at the bottom were clearly meant to be gripped by organic hands, and the energy that crackled across them burned bright and deadly. She clambered to the ground and examined the paneling underneath them, trying to find some kind of seam or weak point. It was solid and unyielding, clearly not meant to be dismantled. She huffed in frustration.  
   
“What are you doing?” the hologram asked. He didn’t sound upset or even surprised. His tone was almost…dismissive.  
   
“I’m not an organic, remember?” she asked. “I don’t need to burn myself alive to get into your system.”  
   
“Do you wish to control the Reapers?”   
   
“Something like that,” she ran her fingers – the ones that still had innervated skin over the metallic joints – over the undersides of the handles and found nothing. “Alright fine, we’ll do it the hard way.”  
   
She removed the network router from her shoulder – or tried to. The heat of the burn had fused it to the surrounding socket, and it wouldn’t move. That explained why her connections wouldn’t work, at least. She looked over at the hologram, who looked just as indifferent as he had a moment ago.  
   
“I need access to your network,” she said. “Clearly you’ve got some kind of connection set up, or you wouldn’t have been able to put together this projection.”  
   
“You wish to connect to the Reapers directly?” he asked.  
   
“That’s what I said, yeah,” she said, nodding towards the control bars with no small amount of frustration. “Don’t even point me towards those things. If you can get into my memory, the connection should be able to work both ways.”  
   
“We can attempt a connection,” he said slowly. “However, there is no guarantee that your software will be capable of integration with ours.”  
   
“Integration isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Shepard muttered, “but sure.”  
   
She left her connections open in case it made a difference, letting her eyes close. She hated how vulnerable it made her feel, and more than anything she wished she could at least link up to the Normandy to make sure someone else had her back – Traynor would probably squeal like a pyjak at the opportunity to see the Reaper hivemind.  
   
There was a strange feeling of being pulled, and then an explosion of data. She had to put up every shield she had to keep from getting overloaded by the sheer amount of code working within the network. The geth server was like a single hexagonal space in the Reapers’ hive of honeycomb. It was so vast, so empty, and yet so crowded.  
   
Whole cities, whole civilizations made of pure software stretched on as far and as deep as Shepard could sense. The world around her was made of measurements of memory and drive space Shepard didn’t have words to quantify. The network swarmed with connections moving at lightning speed from light years apart. It was like looking down from orbit and watching the countries of Earth, illuminated with bright clusters of activity. In its complexity, it was beautiful.  
   
It was also sickening to watch. Every exchange of data, every runtime, every execution of a program, and every creation and destruction of files was permeated with a single directive. The Reapers only had one purpose, and it was to harvest. The great universe of data before her worked solely for the purpose of destruction.  
   
She could feel the Catalyst, a nebulous cloud of data even more intimidating than Harbinger, still linked to her system.  
   
>I can control the Reapers from here?  
   
>>Yes.  
   
She took a moment to string a few lines of code together, appending it onto the program that had saved her from indoctrination.  
   
>And they will obey me?  
   
>>Yes.  
   
There was so much space in which to work, the self-replication process wouldn’t have any trouble. With each new segment of Reaper code it found, it would spread and multiply like a virus. Like a plague.  
   
>So that means they won’t fight me?  
   
>>They will not.  
   
She slipped a signature into the top of the program, so its source was unmistakable.  
   
>I’m looking at the whole network right now, right? Whatever signal I give will reach all of them?  
   
>>Yes.  
   
She infected the server with a single copy of the program and let it grow.  
   
>Thank you.  
   
There was no response. When she disconnected, the hologram was gone.  
   
\--  
   
Edi’s terminal blinked with an incoming message from Vega of all people. She almost considered that it might be a mistake, since there probably wasn’t much he would want to tell her from down on the ground, until she read the text that he sent up with it.  
   
>>Holy shit Edi, you HAVE to see this.  
   
The very fact that he’d messaged her directly was cause for concern. The fact that his message contained a link to his visual feed was even more distressing. James hated having someone else look through his optics even more than Kaidan did, so if he was inviting her – knowing she would immediately show the rest of the Normandy – it had to be big.  
   
She opened it on her terminal’s display cautiously. After less than ten seconds, she forwarded it straight to Hackett, her hands shaking hard enough to rattle the reinforcements inside of her joints.  
   
“Holy shit,” Hackett echoed from the CIC, “she did it.”  
   
The file spread throughout the ship, playing on terminal screens in the lower decks so the organic crew could watch what was happening. A flurry of activity nearly stalled the ship’s comms as the file was sent to every ship the crew could reach. Edi doubted it was the only recording being shared; Vega couldn’t be the only one witnessing this down on the ground.  
   
The Reapers were collapsing where they stood. Their lasers blinked out. Their ground troops fell unceremoniously to the earth. A banshee that had raised its arm in preparation to attack instead tumbled backward, its sheen of biotics now gone.  
   
Similar visuals began to come in from across the fleets. Outside the Normandy, Edi could see the Reaper ships that had fired at them only minutes ago, still and lifeless. Their engines were cooling rapidly.    
   
“I don’t understand,” she heard Traynor say incredulously. “The Crucible didn’t even fire.”  
   
“The blueprints showed it had incredible transmission capabilities. Maybe it sent out some sort of self-destruct signal.” Liara suggested.  
   
She’d been working alongside Samantha since Dr. Chakwas had taken care of her most pressing injuries, refusing to let herself be confined to sickbay at a time like this. Edi didn’t really blame her.   
   
“They’re not self-destructing, though,” Traynor replied. “From the reports coming in, their systems are still intact. They’re just…silent.”  
   
Another message reached Edi’s terminal, this one a simple radio signal. Its source was indicated as the Crucible’s main control panel. Heart in her throat, she opened it.  
   
“This is Commander Shepard,” said a wonderfully familiar voice, “ready for pickup.”  
   
Edi actually shot her arms up in triumph.  
   
“On the way, commander,” Jeff said beside her.  
   
Behind them in the CIC, she could hear cheering, as it became increasingly obvious that the Reaper War was finally over. A hurried but uneven set of footsteps told her Liara was on her way up to them. She leaned against the doorway to the cockpit, her eyes watering perhaps in pain.  
   
“Was that her?” she asked.  
   
“Yeah,” Jeff nodded, turning to grin widely at her. “Yeah, that was her.”  
   
Liara slid slowly down until she sat with her back against the doorway, her shoulders shaking with tearful laughter.


	15. Citadel: Party

“You’re _sure_ you don’t want to move back in, sir?” Shepard asked, making her way down the stairs. “Seems like the kind of place you could settle down in.”  
   
“It _is_ the kind of place you can settle down in, and that’s exactly why I want you to have it,” Anderson said.  
   
He glanced pointedly at where Liara was reclined on the living room sofa, then back at Shepard. Shepard shoved the overnight bag into his hands, but she was grinning.  
   
“In that case, you might want to make sure Kahlee didn’t leave anything else behind,” she chuckled. “Although I’m not sure how much good human soap is gonna do on Palaven.”  
   
 “Palaven is only the first three nights,” he said. “After that, we’re headed to Thessia.”  
   
“Wow,” her eyebrows lifted. Interstellar travel was better than it had been, but booking two trips so close together was still impressive. “I sure hope Kahlee knows how lucky she is.”  
   
“We both do,” he said solemnly, and her eyes were drawn to the side of his neck, now perfectly intact. If it had taken her one more second to regain control...  
   
“Have a good time, Anderson,” she put a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve earned it.”  
   
“Come on,” he dropped the bag down onto the floor and pulled her into a hug. “I’m not your CO anymore.”  
   
“You couldn’t have waited one more week?” she said against his shoulder. “I find the one day everyone can get to the Citadel...”  
   
“I couldn’t have waited one more _day_ , Shepard,” he squeezed her tight. “You know what that’s like.”  
   
She just sighed softly, because she _did_ know what it was like.  
   
“Although,” he continued under his breath, “part of me wishes we’d given it a few years. Maybe we could’ve had a little blue ring bearer by then?”  
   
“Get out of here!” She swatted him across the shoulder, or at least tried to. Her laughter threw her aim off quite a bit, so her hand just swished through the air.  
   
“I’ll see you when we get back,” he picked up Kahlee’s bag and made his way out the door, eyes bright and stride unburdened.  
   
Shepard slouched down onto the couch on the other side of Liara, trying to compute how much she would need to buy to feed so many organic guests. Oh god, and she’d need to get levo _and_ dextro drinks, too…  
   
Liara’s voice threw her completely out of her calculations.  
   
“I heard that.”  
   
\--  
   
“You have no idea how hard it is to find a babysitter these days,” Wrex chuckled. “Didn’t used to be a problem, but that changed pretty damn quickly.”  
   
“I just bet,” Shepard tried to crane her neck over to see the photos Bakara was bringing up on her omni-tool. She wasn’t very successful.  
   
“Be patient, Shepard,” Bakara’s eyes twinkled as she connected with the television hanging above the fireplace. “You’ll all get to see them in a moment.”  
   
With a faint hum of static, the TV flickered to life, and the image of three tiny krogan filled the screen.  Their plates were still forming, their eyes wide and bright. Two of them were red-plated, and the third had plates that were a deep, almost shiny grey. In the picture, the grey one was mid-charge, running as fast as they could behind the other two. One of the red-plated children had dug themselves waist-deep into the ground, their legs kicking up into the air. The other appeared to be building something out of differently shaped rocks, many of which had been written on with claw scratches.  
   
A collective cooing sound came from at least three people, Shepard included. The word “cute” wasn’t what Shepard usually thought of when it came to krogan, but it seemed children carried the trait universally.  
   
“Guess which one we named after you, Shepard,” Wrex grinned broadly at her.  
   
“The one with their head stuck in the sand?”  
   
“Nah, that’s Ashley,” he laughed heartily. “Shepard’s the one on the right. I dunno what he’s building here, but he sure has fun with it.”  
   
“That’s Mordin in the back,” Bakara said proudly. “She’s quite the firebrand. It’s a miracle my omni-tool camera got a shot of her that isn’t a complete blur.”  
   
“Different coloration,” Mordin muttered from his seat by the bar. “Most likely recessive phenotype.”  
   
He looked at Bakara, who simply nodded. The happiness in his eyes melted every circuit in Shepard’s heart.  
   
“This isn’t all of them, though,” she raised an eyebrow. “You told me there were eight.”  
   
“In the first clutch, yes,” Bakara nodded. “This isn’t the only photo I brought.”  
   
“Good god, they’re tiny!” Samantha exclaimed, leaning on the sofa behind them. “They look so precious. Those claws have to hurt, though.”  
   
“Of course!” Shepard had never heard Wrex sound so happy in her life. “Gotta be sharp to break through their egg shells.”  
   
“Aww, look at their little plates,” Miranda said softly. “They’re not even fully formed yet.”  
   
“Oh my god, their tails, though,” Jack said incredulously. “They’re just these little nubs. I didn’t know krogan were born with—wait a second.”  
   
She had apparently caught sight of Grunt, who was talking to Zaeed by the kitchen.  
   
“ _Mother of god_ ,” she said, with the air of someone having a life-changing revelation, “you guys have these cute little _tails?_ Holy shit, that’s adorable! How did I never notice this before?”  
   
Shepard was laughing so hard at this point, her eyes squeezed shut and refused to open. She bent nearly double with laughter, biting her lip to try and keep quiet. When she could sit upright again, she felt a three-fingered hand rest on her shoulder. She was still drying her eyes when she heard a voice right behind her.  
   
“Hey, Shepard.”  
   
“Hey Tali,” she coughed, then froze completely still. It was Tali, but it didn’t _sound_ like her.  
   
She whipped around to see Tali, and her eyes didn’t have to adjust to the glare from her faceplate. She wasn’t wearing a faceplate, or gloves, or any other protective components of her exo-suit. Her hair fell in soft waves over her shoulders, her eyes gleamed bright in the light of the fireplace, and the hand on Shepard’s shoulder was soft and unarmored.  
   
“Oh my god,” Shepard whispered, scrambling up and around the sofa so she could get a better look at her.  
   
Her clothing looked so much like her old suit, and yet so different. She wore a dress, the same swirling violet she’d always worn, but it stopped just above her knees. Underneath were plain black leggings that reached to her shoes. There was no armor, no tubing, and no electrical wires. Her hood rested against her back, and her sleeves ended at the wrist. It was clothing meant to be worn, not to be lived in.  
   
“Oh my _god_ ,” she said again, a little louder.  
   
Tali just opened her arms, and Shepard immediately rushed forward and hugged her close. The first word that came to mind was _soft_ , from her clothes to her skin to her hair (she hadn’t expected there to be so much of it).  
   
Tali squeezed back twice as hard, and before she could stop herself Shepard had actually lifted her up a little, unable to believe this was actually happening. When she caught herself, she set her back down.  
   
“You said it would be another two weeks,” Shepard said.  
   
“I lied.” Tali took a step back, keeping her hands on Shepard’s shoulders. “You have no idea how nice it is to finally see you.”  
   
“Likewise,” Shepard couldn’t stop smiling. She’d seen Tali’s face before on Rannoch, however briefly, but it felt like she was meeting her all over again.  
   
By now most of the room’s attention had diverted from the TV screen to the two of them, but everyone seemed to be keeping a cautionary distance. Behind them, Liara made her way out of the office, leaving Glyph glowing brightly behind her.  
   
“I’ve set things up for cards, if anyone’s interested—” she stopped dead in her tracks. “…Tali?”  
   
“Liara!”  
   
Tali took off and nearly jumped on her, and Liara stumbled back a bit as Tali’s arms wrapped around her shoulders. From over her shoulder, Liara looked at Shepard with an astonished smile. Shepard figured she probably looked about the same.  
   
“Yeah, this is about how I imagined it would go.”  
   
Shepard turned to face Garrus, who was leaning against the wall and practically glowing with pride. Shepard elbowed him in the side, then pulled him into a hug as well.     
   
“I’m so glad you two could make it,” she sighed happily.  
   
“Wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” he rumbled in reply.  
   
\--  
   
“So, would a human intoxicant program affect your system?” Edi asked, idly stirring her drink.  
   
“No data available,” Legion replied with a shrug.  
   
“Do you want to find out?” Edi grinned, watching the way his faceplates moved as he considered it. She hadn’t crossed paths with Legion much on the SR-2, but he was proving to be excellent company.  
   
“Yes,” he nodded.  
   
“Oh man, I am not missing this,” Kaidan took a seat at the bar next to Samantha, drumming his fingers with anticipation.  
   
“Right then,” Samantha took a memory card at random from the ones scattered across the surface of the bar. “Do you have a port that can read this, or should we upload one to the network?”  
   
“I have implemented some changes to my system to facilitate data exchange with other synthetics,” Legion took the chip delicately between his fingertips. “Network transfer will not be necessary.”  
   
He pushed the chip into a slot on his arm so small, Edi couldn’t even see it. She and Samantha waited eagerly to see what happened next. The idea of a drunk geth was so outlandish, Edi couldn’t even imagine what it would be like.  
   
After about a minute, though, nothing had happened. Legion’s optic shifted back and forth for a bit, until finally he spoke again.  
   
“It does not appear to affect my system. The processes that this software targets are processes distinct to humans.”  
   
“I’m almost relieved,” Edi murmured.  
   
“I wonder how long it’ll take before someone starts making geth-compatible versions?” Kaidan wondered aloud.  
   
“I don’t know, but when it happens, I want to see it,” Samantha giggled.  
   
“From my observations this evening, the guests who consume alcohol appear to enjoy it,” Legion remarked. “Should such software ever become available, I would like to try it.”  
   
“It’s not for everyone,” Edi shrugged. “I can’t stand the stuff, personally. But if you ever get the chance, I guarantee it’ll be a new experience. And since you’re synthetic, you won’t get hung over!”  
   
“Consumption appears to be a highly social activity,” Legion tapped his fingers against the bar.  
   
“So we’ll make a night of it,” Kaidan suggested. “Us, Shepard, probably Tali and Garrus, drinks, food, maybe a couple of vids? Nothing too crazy, but it could be fun.”  
   
“The idea is quite appealing,” Legion said.   
   
“It’s a date then,” Samantha nodded. “Or…it’s not an _exact_ date, but you know what I mean.”  
   
“I can’t wait,” Edi said happily.  
   
\--  
   
She was half-sitting on a floor light, but whatever. Samara didn’t usually pick the most comfortable place to meditate, and this was the first opportunity Shepard had gotten in months to talk to her. She closed the port holding her intoxicant chip while she settled down next to her, and its effects on her system stopped. She wondered why organics even drank alcohol, since they couldn’t get it out of their system that quickly.  
   
Samara didn’t drink, though. Whether that was because of the Code or just because she didn’t want to, Shepard wasn’t sure. Question for another day, she decided. There were much more important things to ask about right now.  
   
“How’s Falere doing?”  
   
“You could ask her yourself, if you wish,” Samara replied, looking sideways at Shepard. “She is here on the Citadel this week, speaking on behalf of the many people like her still recovering from this war.”  
   
“Wow,” Shepard’s eyebrows lifted. She made careful note of the non-specific language Samara was using. “I imagine that’s a pretty sensitive issue.”  
   
“If anything, it is even more of a volatile subject than it was before the war,” Samara replied solemnly. “However, I am confident that Falere’s visit will be very beneficial, both to herself and to those in her situation. She is still young, but she has grown into a strong-hearted woman…thanks in no small part to you.”  
   
“I’m sure your influence had something to do with that,” Shepard chuckled. “I’ll admit I’ve been keeping an eye out for your name in the news networks, but they’ve been quiet. What have you been up to, since the war ended?”  
   
“I have been with my daughter,” her back straightened just a little bit more, and steely resolve flashed in her eyes. “The way asari society treats people like Falere does more harm than good, and not just because it made them easy targets for the Reapers. I myself have contributed to the problem in ways I did not even realize. Falere and I are both working to change that, and we are not alone in our cause. It is not how I imagined spending my life, but it is certainly fulfilling.”  
   
“I get the feeling Falere isn’t the only one here for a speaking engagement,” Shepard leaned forward a little to get a better look at her, smiling knowingly.  
   
“She is not. However, I am here to speak regarding a slightly different issue.” Samara gave her a rather unamused look. “Other justicars are not always entirely respectful when delivering a new initiate to a monastery. The Code has a detailed set of rules regarding prisoner transport, but it seems that they are not as widely enforced as I have been led to believe.”  
   
“Oh man. You haven’t met any of those other justicars in person, have you?”  
   
“Only one,” Samara replied, “and our acquaintanceship was very brief.”  
   
The terse clip of her voice told Shepard everything she needed to know.  
   
“Sorry,” she sighed. “I shouldn’t have asked.”  
   
“It’s alright. I believe the encounter encouraged some of the newer initiates to trust me a bit more.”  
   
“I guess that’s good,” Shepard nodded. “How long are you and Falere on the Citadel?”  
   
“We will be leaving in three days’ time,” Samara replied. “I’m sure she would be happy to see you again before we leave.”  
   
“I’d love that,” Shepard leaned back a little and felt her shoulders relaxed. She didn’t have much else to say, but that was fine. Samara was one of those people who understood silence as well as speech.  
   
\--  
   
“I’m not even kidding; you could have driven a Mako through that thing’s mouth.”  
   
Garrus made a vague sort of motion with one hand, like he was holding an invisible toy Mako and driving it around. Shepard wondered idly how many drinks he’d had. Samantha’s mental compendium of interstellar cocktail recipes had made things decidedly more interesting. She’d gotten tired of bartending and joined the rest of them upstairs a minute ago, though. From the sound of it, more people were on their way behind her.  
   
“Oh hell no,” James laughed. “You are makin’ that up, Scars.”  
   
“Vega’s right,” Shepard nodded sagely, just a little longer than she had intended to – the digital Thessian Sunrise was more than she’d bargained for. “You couldn’t drive anything through its mouth. It had that giant frickin’ cannon in the way.”  
   
“It was _huge_ , though! You remember!” Garrus persisted. “Scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I mean, I’ve fought all kinds of Reapers, but none of the big ones ever got up in my face like that.”  
   
“And now they never will,” Edi said delightedly, raising her glass. “To victory.”  
   
“To the Normandy,” Garrus raised his.  
   
“To Shepard!” Grunt’s bottle sloshed a bit from his enthusiasm.  
   
“To finally ending this fucking war,” Shepard didn’t have a drink to raise, but her heart was in the right place.  
   
“I’ll drink to that,” Liara’s voice was rounded at the edges by the inside of her glass.    
   
There was a quiet moment, filled with the soft sound of glasses being raised and set back down.  
   
“I do not understand this ritual of consuming alcohol as an expression of reverence,” Javik remarked, “but I approve of it.”  
   
“Seriously?” Joker said in disbelief. “We finally found something from this century you like? Damn, I gotta write this down. Or is Liara gonna write a paper about it?”  
   
“Something tells me my colleagues wouldn’t appreciate it as much as you do,” Liara laughed softly.  
   
“You sure about that?” Vega asked. “You’re practically a legend now, Doc. You could write a paper on anything, and people would be tripping over themselves to publish it.”  
   
“That’s precisely the reason I shouldn’t let the quality of my work decline,” Liara began. “I have to maintain a level of professional integrity, and—you’re joking. Oh goddess, how am I still so bad at this?”  
   
She slowly covered her face with both hands, her crest tinged with violet. Shepard gave her shoulder a gentle pat, trying not to laugh and mostly succeeding.  
   
Fortunately, the sound of Wrex stomping his way upstairs diverted the attention of the room. He leaned against the back of the sofa where Joker sat, pointing a rather annoyed finger at Shepard and Liara.  
   
“That jumped-up drone of yours cheats,” he grumbled. “Didn’t even take four hands for _this_ one to clean me out!”  
   
He pointed behind him this time, and Shepard could see Tali had followed him upstairs.  
   
“I hate to break this to you Wrex,” she sighed, “but you have a terrible poker face.”  
   
“And you _don’t_!” Wrex shouted incredulously. “How did that happen?”   
   
“It’s a gift,” Tali shrugged, leaning against the wall with a satisfied smirk. “Although Thane is a lot better at bluffing than I am. He and Kasumi might still be at it tomorrow morning.”  
   
“That figures,” Joker chuckled softly. “So which one of them got you, Tali?”  
   
“Neither,” Tali shrugged. “I got bored. Somehow it’s not as interesting without Wrex at the table.”  
   
“Somehow,” Liara’s eyebrows lifted.  
   
\--  
   
The evening was starting to wind down, but nevertheless it was just a little too much for Edi to handle. Being around this many people was great fun…up to a certain point. She’d finally hit that point, but she didn’t want to leave yet. She made her way to the first-floor bedroom, the only room that seemed to be both empty and quiet. What she needed right now was a moment to breathe before she rejoined the others.  
   
She leaned against the wall next to the punching bag, letting the sound of the party in the background fade out so she could clear her head. One deep breath at a time, she felt herself relax.  
   
After about four, she noticed the shuffling noise coming from the closet next to her. She poked her head in to see nobody, but there was a faint shimmer next to the open drawer at the back, which could only mean one thing.  
   
“Kasumi?” she asked. “I thought you were still playing cards.”  
   
“No, the game got called off,” Kasumi un-cloaked and sifted through the clothes in front of her – _that probably weren’t hers,_ Edi realized.  “They moved Glyph into the kitchen and turned it into a dance floor.”  
   
“That explains a lot,” Edi sighed softly. “What are you doing back here anyway—no, you know what, I don’t want to know.”  
   
“If you’re looking for somewhere quiet, the office should be empty,” Kasumi smiled sympathetically at her. “You can shut the door, too.”  
   
“Thanks,” Edi said, wincing a little as the dance music in the kitchen switched to a song with more bass.  
   
“No problem,” Kasumi winked and re-activated her cloak. “One introvert to another.”  
   
Edi made her way around the kitchen as quickly as she could – it seemed like half the party was dancing now, and it wasn’t quiet. When she reached the office door, however, she could see that Eva and Samantha were standing by the fireplace. She sighed in disappointment and turned to seek refuge upstairs, but then she heard Samantha speak.  
   
“Have I ever told you,” her voice was warm and slow with liquor, “that you have the most beautiful voice?”  
   
Edi’s eyes went painfully wide. She slipped to one side, standing on the rocks surrounding the walkway, and did her best to look through the doorway without being seen. It wasn’t really a conversation she should be listening in on, but…well, no, she didn’t have any excuses. She was eavesdropping, but Kasumi was going through someone else’s clothes, so she wasn’t the only one invading someone’s privacy tonight.  
   
Eva looked surprised in a way that made Edi a bit sad.  
   
“No, you didn’t.” She finally said.  
   
“Well, you do.”  
   
The nervous way Samantha fiddled with the ends of her hair betrayed how nervous she really was. It was clear to Edi it was taking a lot of courage, both innate and induced, to actually say that. Eva looked even more confused now, her brows beginning to furrow.  
   
“I fail to see how. I sound exactly like Edi.”  
   
Edi flinched back for a moment and winced. There were only two ways their conversation could go now, and one of them would only end in tears.  
   
“Oh no, you don’t. You’ve got a similar pitch sure, but your voice is all…warm. And strong.”  
   
Edi turned back around in time to see Samantha’s eyes wander downward, then up.  
   
“Much like the rest of you.”  
   
Eva paused for a full second longer than she should have, and it was clear the penny had finally dropped.  
   
“...oh. Oh, you mean—I see.”  
   
Edi could barely hear her. She was looking at the floor now, and Edi felt her heart clench. She wondered how she was going to leave without either of them hearing her kick up gravel, because she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the rest of this.  
   
“Oh no,” Samantha sighed. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”  
   
“No,” Eva shook her head, still not looking at her. “It’s not…”  
   
“I should probably go,” Samantha turned to leave, and right when Edi was about to take off, Eva reached for her.  
   
“That isn’t what I meant,” she said quickly.  
   
Samantha stopped, then turned to face her.  
   
“I’ve never thought about that before,” Eva continued. “Not once.”  
   
“I see,” Samantha nodded slowly. “How do you feel about it right now?”  
   
“I’m not sure,” Eva finally looked up at her, “but I think I want to find out.”  
   
Edi actually bit her lip to keep from yelling in excitement.  
   
“Then,” Samantha whispered, “can I…can I kiss you?”  
   
After another pause that was far too long, Eva nodded.  
   
Samantha had to stand up on her toes to reach her, but she managed. She was gentle, even tender, bringing her hands up to cradle Eva’s face and drawing her in for a kiss. When they separated, her eyes were hopeful.  
   
“Is that good?” she asked.  
   
“Yes,” Eva quickly pulled her back in.  
   
Edi closed the office door before running upstairs, unsure if she felt more happy for them or ashamed of herself.  
   
\--  
   
Shepard heard the click of Glyph’s camera and vaguely registered that she probably hadn’t been facing forward when it went off. Liara had sat down beside her on the sofa and given her this _look_ , this smile that could light up the whole Citadel, and she hadn’t wanted to look at anything else. Whatever, the point was they’d gotten everyone into the same picture. It was a _very_ crowded photo, but you could see everyone. At this point, pictures were going to be necessary for those in attendance without hard-coded memory records.  
   
Once the photo was taken, the crowd dispersed once more, and Shepard was about to watch somebody (Kaidan?) play something on the piano when Liara took hold of her arm. She tugged her up the stairs and across the hall, and Shepard didn’t realize where they were headed until she heard the bedroom door shut behind them.  
   
Liara wasted no time whatsoever, all but throwing her against the wall and kissing her furiously. She made quick work of her zipper and slid her hand between them, and after a moment Shepard realized she couldn’t taste any alcohol on Liara’s tongue. She shut off the whiskey in her mouth so fast, her system took a second to set itself right. As pleasant as it had been, she didn’t want to feel anything but Liara right now.    
   
The slow but insistent glide of Liara’s fingers down her stomach was distracting enough that when she moved her mouth down to the side of her neck, Shepard actually jumped. She opened her network, bracing herself against the wall and waiting for the link, but none came. She turned to Liara with a questioning look, but all she got in response was a mischievous smile and two fingers moving down and spreading her folds apart.  
   
Wet as she was, Liara had no trouble sliding one of them inside, and then a second. She twisted her wrist a bit so her index finger curled up and over, sliding gloriously over Shepard’s clit, and _where exactly had she learned that_? Shepard didn’t get much chance to ask, though, because whatever words she could put together weren’t making it out of her mouth.  
   
With her other hand, Liara took hold of her shoulder and pressed her against the wall. It tilted Shepard’s hips just a little, which gave her freedom of movement enough to go faster. She pressed her lips to the side of Shepard’s neck again and gently bit down, and Shepard’s nails scratched lightly against the wall behind her.  
   
Never before had Shepard’s system been overloaded with input so quickly. It wasn’t unusual for Liara to take the lead, but she’d never _devoured_ her like this. Shepard felt her body begin to shake, liquid heat building up inside her, and it felt strange to have Liara so close, but still separate from her.  
   
The hand on her shoulder moved up to her hair, and Liara moved back up to kiss her roughly, all hunger and want. Shepard’s arm flew up to clutch at her back, fingers scrambling for purchase on the fabric of her clothes as she whimpered into Liara’s mouth. All at once, the heat inside her flared up through her whole body, and the back of her head would have hit the wall were it not for Liara’s hand. Her eyes screwed shut and she felt a desperate moan tear out of her, gasping for breath she didn’t need.  
   
When she opened her eyes again, Liara’s expression was surprisingly soft.  
   
“Beautiful,” she whispered.  
   
Shepard didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so she settled for the former. She leaned against the wall a bit bonelessly, feeling her legs begin to object to their current position.  
   
“Wow,” she sighed softly. “That was…I don’t think I’ve ever…”  
   
“It wasn’t too much, was it?” Liara asked, holding Shepard by the waist and drawing her back towards the bed. “I didn’t want to leave you feeling stranded.”  
   
“It _was_ too much,” Shepard held up a hand before Liara started freaking out, “but in a really good way.”  
   
“Good,” Liara set Shepard down gently and took a seat next to her. “I’ve always sort of wanted to see that. You…on your own, if that makes sense.”  
   
“It does,” Shepard nodded, linking their fingers together. “God, how did I get so lucky?”  
   
“I should ask you the same thing,” Liara lay down sideways so they faced each other, their legs hanging off the side of the bed. “I love you, Shepard.”  
   
“I love you too,” Shepard moved closer, feeling her strength coming back. “Let me show you how much?”  
   
Liara nodded, and Shepard moved her gently onto her back. She kicked her own shoes off and shuffled out of her jeans before pulling her jacket and shirt off in one fluid movement. She was far too warm to need them, at this point. When she looked back, Liara had begun to unfasten the clasps at the collar of her dress, and she reached over to still her hands.  
   
“Allow me.”  
   
She took Liara by the hand and stood them both up for a moment, unclasping Liara’s dress and letting it fall to the floor with a hush of fabric. That done, she guided her down again and kissed her deeply, hooking two fingers into the waistband of her panties. She kissed her way down Liara’s chest, grazing her nails lightly over her hips as she tugged downward, until she knelt on the floor and Liara was bare and open before her.  
   
Even though Liara probably couldn’t see it, she licked her lips. Slowly, she pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the inside of Liara’s hip, then sunk her teeth into it and sucked. Liara’s hand flew to her mouth, but it barely stifled the shivering moan that left her. Shepard reached up and tugged gently at her bent elbow; they’d made sure the bedroom was soundproof ages ago, so they might as well make use of it.  
   
Liara let go with a slightly embarrassed smile, and when Shepard did the same to her other hip, her voice echoed faintly off the glass wall in the bathroom. Her folds were glistening with need by the time Shepard’s tongue dragged slowly over them, and she tilted her hips upward with a frustrated gasp, desperate for more contact.  
   
Shepard worked her hands underneath and then around her legs, lifting her up so she could slide her tongue around and then inside. She kept her networks open and ready, but even when she wrapped her lips around Liara’s clit and flicked her tongue across it, Liara -didn’t reach for her mind. It didn’t bother her for now, though. Clearly Liara had thought this through, and she looked forward to seeing how far.  
   
She heard Liara’s voice jump up higher, and she knew so well what that meant that her own system pulsed with pleasure she wasn’t even linked up to feel. She knew exactly what to do though, and so she squeezed just a little with her fingernails and kept her tongue moving, around and around and around. Liara’s head snapped to one side, her back moving in a slow, sinuous arch until she fell back gasping, her legs shaking against Shepard’s arms.  
   
It took her a moment to catch her breath, and so Shepard moved her arms back and rubbed soothing circles over her thighs. At last, she sat up and smiled down at Shepard, running a hand gently over her hair.  
   
“Goddess,” she whispered, a bit hoarsely. “The asari used to believe that was the feeling of the soul leaving the body. I believe now, I understand why.”  
   
Shepard just laughed, resting her head on Liara’s knee and enjoying the feeling of her hair being pet. There was still a spark in her eyes, the lingering promise of more, but Shepard was in no hurry.  
   
“If you feel up to it…” Liara glanced sideways at her nightstand. “There _is_ something I’ve been meaning to show you.”  
   
Shepard’s eyes snapped open.  
   
“No way…” she whispered.  
   
“The manufacturer had an unexpected windfall recently,” Liara slid up the bed and pulled the top drawer open, “so production was re-started ahead of schedule.”  
   
The toy she produced was a deep violet, smooth and curved. Its short end was bent at a narrow angle to its long end, and for all Shepard had heard of asari technology when it came to sex, it looked surprisingly simple.  
   
“Wow,” she whispered. “Can I see it?”  
   
Liara handed it to her, and its simplicity was betrayed by its weight. Underneath the outside casing, Shepard could feel a solid yet flexible core. It was supposed to transfer sensation to the wearer through skin contact, but Shepard couldn’t see how. There were no visible points of conductive material that would work with an organic wearer. It was a mystery, and she loved it.  
   
(It wasn’t designed for a synthetic wearer – that was a whole other land of possibilities Shepard wasn’t particularly interested in traveling, at present.)    
   
“Would you like to try it?” Liara asked, her voice low and full of want.  
   
“God, yes.”  
   
With a low chuckle, Liara took a small bottle from the drawer and slid it shut. She moved back a little, and Shepard followed until they were comfortably settled in the center of the bed. Leaned back against the headboard, surrounded by pillows, Liara beckoned her closer.  
   
“You’ve actually made this part easier,” Liara drew her finger up the short end of the toy. “Would you like to do the honors, or shall I?”  
   
“I – ah,” Shepard stammered. She’d never really handled anything like this before, and she didn’t want to inadvertently hurt her.  
   
“It’s alright,” Liara drew the toy out of her hands gently, uncapping the bottle with her thumb. “I already made sure it works.”  
   
“Really, now?” Shepard raised an eyebrow at her, wondering when exactly that had happened.  
   
“Mhm,” she drizzled a bit of the clear lubricant over the short end, making sure it spread evenly. “I look forward to seeing how you like it, because to me it feels amazing.”  
   
She lifted her hips up a bit and positioned the end in front of her entrance, sliding it in just a little, then back out. On the second pass, she made it about halfway, and on the third she was able to slide it in to the hilt. It pressed flush against her, a flare of material near the front covering her clit and outer lips. She held it for a moment before letting go, sighing contentedly when it stayed in place.  
   
“What does it feel like?” Shepard wondered aloud.  
   
“Why don’t you get over here and find out?”  
   
Liara’s tone was playful, but the hand she ran up Shepard’s leg was dead serious. Shepard climbed atop her, leaning back a little so Liara could apply the lubricant to her end, as well. Holding onto it with one hand, she slowly slid down, feeling her body stretch around the shaft until their hips met. The way it made Liara moan was nothing short of delicious.  
   
Shepard leaned down and kissed her, just to make sure she still could, and that was when she finally felt the tendrils of a link ghost over her system. She let Liara in without a second thought, and as their minds began to fuse, Shepard understood what Liara meant. She hadn’t been able to see the conductive material, but it was obviously there, because Liara could feel Shepard’s walls squeezing around her as though the toy was just another part of her body.  
   
She leaned back enough to find some leverage and began to move, rocking her hips slowly back and forth. It was new and strange and wonderful, feeling the lightning-sharp pleasure that shot through Liara each time she moved. She hadn’t expected to enjoy the sensation of being filled this much, but it was a welcome surprise. Even more welcome was the emotion that ran deeper in the link: feelings of power, of hunger, of fierce and desperate love.  
   
Liara’s hand latched onto her hip, her nails pressing in harder than Shepard’s had before, and the brief flash of pain spun a new coil of heat inside her circuits. She began to move faster, letting her eyes shut again as she fell deeper into the bond between them. Code she didn’t recognize drifted at the edge of her awareness, different from her own, different from the geth, different from the reapers. It was a short series of coiling lines, written in a language she couldn’t read.  
   
It wasn’t until she noticed that it was attached so strongly to Liara’s thoughts that she realized what she was seeing. She stopped for a moment, gasping, trying to explain through thought that _they were right, it was possible, they were right all along_. What was an organic human’s DNA if not biological programming?  
   
“It’s all code,” she whispered breathlessly. “It’s all just code.”  
   
“Goddess,” Liara said softly. “I wonder…”  
   
Something shifted, and Shepard’s system was scanned, analyzed, washed over and run through a sifting screen by Liara’s presence. Tentative lines of warm, living code began to wrap around her own, and between them Shepard could see it begin to prepare itself for duplication – with alterations from Shepard’s system.  
   
_Synthesis_.  
   
Whose thought it had been, neither of them could tell. They looked at each other for a long, stunned moment, and then they started to laugh.  
   
“I can’t believe it,” Shepard ran a hand up the back of Liara’s neck, unable to stop smiling.  
   
“I’m not sure right now is…” Liara’s void-black eyes looked hopeful, but uncertain.  
   
“Me either,” she shook her head. This wasn’t a decision they should make quite that quickly. “But it’s possible.”  
   
“It’s possible,” Liara nodded. “I can _feel_ you. Shepard, I can _read_ you—”  
   
Her hands began to grab at Shepard, pulling her closer and kissing her roughly as their hips began to move again. The meld continued to deepen until there wasn’t a line of Shepard’s code Liara hadn’t touched. For the first time, it was honestly, entirely impossible for Shepard to tell where she ended and Liara began, and it made her happy enough to cry. Electric, molten heat began to build between them, the sensations blending together and setting their bodies alight.    
   
Liara’s teeth dug into her collar and she screamed, clenching hard around Liara’s synthetic shaft. The feeling of it sent shockwaves through them both, and it was all Liara could do to hold tightly onto her and whimper softly against her skin. Shepard’s fingers dug into Liara’s back hard enough to leave marks, and even when the storm had passed neither of them wanted to let go.  
   
Slowly, their minds began to separate, and Shepard slid off of her and rolled to the side.  
   
“Oh my god,” she said softly. “Did that happen, or did I dream it?”  
   
“It happened,” Liara looked over at her with eyes full of wonder, “and with any luck it will happen again.”  
   
“If I have anything to say about it, it will,” she took her hand and kissed it softly. “In the meantime, I think a nice hot bath sounds like a really good idea.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Liara sighed happily. “Now that we have the time.”

“Yeah,” Shepard took her hand and laced their fingers together. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”


End file.
